FOLLOWING
THE RED PATH
The Native People's Caravan, 1974
by Vern Harper (-1?0)
Frontispiece: John LaFord
Copyright € 1979 Vern Harper
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior
written permission of NC Press Limited.
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Harper, Vern.
Following the Red Path
Bibliography: р.
Includes index.
ISBN 0-919600-58-1 ра.
1. Indians of North America - Canada - Government relations. 2. Indians
of North America - Canada - Social conditions. 3. Indians of North
America - Canada - Land tenure. 4. Demonstrations - Canada.
1 Title.
E92.H37 323.1°19°7071 ' C79-094114-7
We would like to thank the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada
Council for their assistance in the production of this book.
New Canada Publications, a division of NC Press Limited, Box 4010,
Station A, Toronto, Ontario, MSW 1H8.
“l believe every Native person is born into the
movement.”
—Leonard Peltier from Oakalla Prison, B.C.,
April 1976
Leonard Peltier is an Oglala Sioux activist from
Wounded Knee and a leader of the American In-
dian Movement. He was arrested by the RCMP at
Small Boy’s camp in Alberta on February 6, 1976,
after being hunted down by the American govern-
ment in its war against Native resistance across the
land. The Canadian government, co-operating
with the FBI, extradited him to the United States
on December 18, 1976. As part of the ongoing
struggle for Nationhood by all Native people in
North America, this book is dedicated to Leonard
Peltier and to all other Native American political
prisoners.
Author's note
It took hundreds of people to make the Native
People's Caravan happen, and | would like to
thank all the brothers and sisters who participated
in the Caravan and supported us across the coun-
uy. '
Special thanks to my wife, Pauline Shirt Harper,
who was one of the strongest believers and workers
in the Caravan and who worked alongside me in
developing this book; to my children and grand-
children, who were patient while | worked on the
project, and who will always be part of the
movement; and to Louis Cameron, who en-
couraged me to record the Caravan's history.
I would also like to thank Genevieve Leslie and
Norman Zlotkin for helping me put the story down
on paper. It's important to talk about the process
of writing this book, so that other Native people
will be encouraged to write about our history as it
happens. Like many Native people I have had very
little formal schooling, and when | started to work
on this book — over two years ago — 1 had just
taught myself how to read and write. We worked
with tape recordings and transcripts, and 1 cir-
culated a first draft of the manuscript to people in
the Native community for comments. By the time
the book was finished I had learned a lot about
writing and publishing, but I had also discovered
that if Native people really want to get message ac-
ross they can use modern technology to do it, in
our traditional storytelling way.
Many other people contributed to the writing of
this book, and I would like to thank the following
individuals and groups for their time, effort and
support: Richard Bedwash, Mary Bowen, Bright
Eyes, Bernie Bunny, Stephen Burdeck, Maria
Campbell, Christine Collins, Joleigh Comman-
dant, Dorthy Contin, Ginger Cote, Christine
Daniels, Rosie Douglas, Don Filayson, Bucky
Green, Vicki Green, Tommy Harper, Vince Har-
per, Judy Haiven, Larry Haiven, Carol Johnston,
Clarence Kakage, Nancy Kimura, Joanna Leslie,
Bill Lewis, Lone Wolf, Fay Mackenzie, John
MacLeod, Jenny Margetts, Geri Martin, Michael
Martin, Jeffrey McDonald, Don McLean, Rianne
Nahwegezhic, Don Nelson from Saskatchewan,
Gordon Nightscout, Rose Nightscout, Roger
Obonsawin, Mary Paisley, Clara Pratt, John
Pratt, Heather Ramsay, Paul Ritchie, Jackie
Rosen, Larry Rosen, Doris Rotz, Pauline Smith,
Dawn Smoke, Art Solomon, Wayne Stonechild,
Naz Therriault, Shannon Two-Feathers, Spence
Waboose, Don Whiteside, Jim Wilkinson, Agnes
Woods, Bobby Woods, Nancy Paul Woods, the
Allied Indian-Métis Society (AIMS) in. Kingston,
Anduhyaun, the Canadian Native Friendship Cen-
tre in Toronto, the Federation of Native Friendship
Centres, the Métis and Non-Status Indian Assoc-
iation of Saskatchewan, the Native Brotherhoods
in the federal and provincial penal institutions, the
Nelson Small-Legs Jr. Foundation, Pedahbun
Lodge, the Prisoners’ Rights Organization, the
Toronto Quakers Indian Committee, the Wander-
ing Spirit Survival School, and the many others
who made this book possible. Thanks also to
Carolyn Walker of NC Press for her patience in
learning what “Indian time” is all about.
And, finally, a very special thank you to the
elders and to the grandfathers.
П
ПІ
IV
VI
VII
VIII
IX
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XVI
Contents
How the Caravan Began /19
Vancouver to Saskatoon: On the Road /13
Regina: No Drinking Allowed /19
Winnipeg: Showdown over the RCMP /23
Kenora: The Leadership Splits /27
Thunder Bay: A New Leadership Emerges 731
The Soo and Sudbury: Picking Up Speed /35
Time Out to Rest /39
Trouble in Toronto /43
On to Ottawa /49
The RCMP Riot /55
Back from the Hill /67
The Native People's Embassy /73
Government-Funded Native Organizations /77
What's After Tomorrow? /83
Following the Red Path /89
“In July, 1974, Louis Cameron and the Ojibway Warrior Society occupied Anicinabe Park near Kenora and demanded
that it be returned to Native people." THE CANADIAN PRESS
8 FOLLOWING THE RED PATH
I How The Caravan Began
]t all started in Montréal in the summer of 1974,
just after the armed occupation of Anicinabe Park,
and the road blockade at Cache Creek. In July,
Louis Cameron and the Ojibway Warrior Society
occupied Anicinabe Park near Kenora, and de-
manded that it be returned to Native people. In
August, Chief Ken Basil led the Cache Creek
Warrior Society in a blockade of Highway 12 in
British Columbia, in a protest against housing con-
ditions on the Bonaparte Reserve.
Louis Cameron and I were in Montréal to
meet some Native people and to talk about where
to go next. We recognized Cache Creek and
Kenora as good tactics, but we thought that
another armed occupation would not accomplish
much at that time. We were trying to win the public
and our own people over, and we wanted to
develop another tactic.
We were tossing about ideas when I suggested
to Louis that we organize a caravan, since we were
talking about reaching the public. There had been
the Trail of Broken Treaties in the States, a cara-
van that went to Washington and turned into an
occupation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs office
down there, and we thought that a caravan would
be a good way to get public support. Then some-
one mentioned that September 30th was the open-
ing of Parliament and said, ‘‘Let’s get our people
to expose the hypocrisy of the Canadian govern-
ment. It tells us to bring our grievances to Parlia-
ment. Well, let's test them. Let's organize and take
our people to Ottawa."
We knew that official Native organizations
like the National Indian Brotherhood and the
Native Council of Canada weren't being listened
to. It was quite clear to us that these national
Native organizations, which had been created by
the government in the first place, were just being
used. On the one hand, the government would say,
**We'll only talk to your leaders," but when the
leaders tried to talk to them the government
wouldn't listen. And so we decided that we would
organize to bring Native people themselves to Par-
liament. We would try to get the support of people
in the government-funded Native organizations,
and if they wanted to support us, fine. If they
didn't, we'd go ahead without their help.
We decided to call across the country and talk
to some of the people in the movement—American
Indian Movement (AIM) groups, Warrior Societies,
and other supporters. At the same time we were in
touch with the brothers out West, Ken Basil and
Ed Burnstick. Chief Ken Basil had been the leader
of the armed road blockade at Cache Creek, and
Ed Burnstick—who was working for Alberta
Native Communications—was the Co-ordinator of
the American Indian Movement in Canada. They
were thinking of a caravan ioo, but they just
wanted a caravan that would deal with housing on
the reserves. Louis suggested that we unite our
forces and put together demands that affected all
Native people. We could have a national caravan
coming across the country, starting in Vancouver.
Ken Basil and Ed Burnstick liked the idea, and
agreed to work with us.
Right from the beginning, it was to be a cara-
van for all Native people. Even though most of the
leaders were people from the American Indian
Movement, it was not an AIM caravan; it was the
Native People's Caravan. There was an open call
to all Native people, whether or not they lived on
the other side of that imaginary line called the bor-
HOW THE CARAVAN BEGAN 9
der. We saw ourselves as Native people, not as
Canadians or Americans. But the Caravan was
controlled by people who lived in the northern
areas. AIM leaders in the States had their hands full
where they were. They were our cousins; they
wished us the best; and when they had the chance
to help us they sent us one of their best spokes-
persons—John Trudell. But they were so busy in
their own areas that they could only play a suppor-
tive role.
We talked about non-native support, and
asked “Will we restrict it to certain groups?” But it
was agreed that we should try to build a broad
front. A call for support went out to all progressive
people who would accept Native leadership and
take direction from us. Anyone could join the
Caravan under those conditions. It was agreed that
the CPC(ML)* would give financial and organiza-
tional support to the Caravan, using their contacts
across the country.
So Louis flew out to Edmonton, and | went
back to Barrie, where I was working in Brown-
dale's programme for emotionally disturbed
Native children. 1 had been demoted and sent to
Barrie after the armed occupation at Kenora, be-
cause I had taken one of the Browndale vehicles in-
to the Park. It was agreed that if things went
smoothly I would stay in Barrie, but that if things
didn't work out too well I would have to leave and
join the Caravan.
On September 10th, Louis Cameron and Ken
Basil held a press conference at the Native Friend-
ship Centre in Edmonton, and announced the
Caravan. After that, they went to Vancouver and
set up a steering committee. There was Ken Dennis,
Dennis Hanuse, Ken Basil, Ed Burnstick and Louis
Cameron. It was decided that Louis should go
ahead of the Caravan to raise money and drum up
public support. Because of the time factor they had
to move quickly. There were less than three weeks
left to organize the Caravan and get to Ottawa.
*The Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist),
which followed the teachings of Chairman Mao Tse Tung, as
opposed to the Communist Party of Canada, which takes a
pro-Russia position.
10 FOLLOWING THE RED PATH
Starting out, the core of the Caravan was
people from Cache Creek, and people from Skid
Row in Vancouver. People were involved in the
Caravan for a number of reasons. Some of them
never did believe in the movement, but they be-
lieved in Native people, Some of the young women
would probably have been on the street И they
hadn't joined the Caravan. A lot of people had
never been anywhere, had lived in isolated areas or
just in the cities. This was an opportunity for them
to see the country, and that was why some of them
joined. But as we went from city to city, they be-
came more interested in what the Caravan was
doing. They were looking for leadership, too. They
had no real trust in the official Native organiza-
tions. р =
And the runaways. We had some young kids
who'd run away from home and the authorities
were anxious to come and see who we had with us
We wouldn't allow any agency to do that, so thesc
kids stayed with us, and as long as they behaved
themselves, we accepted them. These kids had no-
where to go and were just running, but they felt ai
home with us and they felt good. Afterwards, some
of them went back home and made amends witli
their families. People started to get some kind о!
direction on the Caravan.
Most of the people on the Caravan were
young, but we had all age groups. There were some
women and some families with us, and quite a few
children. A really good thing was that people from
different tribes were all a part of it—Micmac,
Blackfoot, Cree, Ojibway, and different tribal
people from British Columbia.
Our goal was to get to Ottawa by September
30th, to be on Parliament Hill for the opening о!
Parliament, and to bring the demands of Native
people to the government. And while I was in
Barrie, the Caravan started.
"When People Are Calling, You Go”
"When people are calling, you go," Eetsah said,
“and so | joined the Caravan. | have to struggle
along with my people—their struggles are my
struggles."
Eetsah is an Indian woman, an Albertan
resident, who travelled with the Native People's
Caravan to Ottawa. “When | joined the Caravan in
Edmonton," she said, “ту oldest child — she's
eight—begged me to take her along with me. She
knows what our struggle is all about—l've
explained things to her.
“When I was going to school they always told
us the government looks after you. They are there
to help you. When I grew ир | found out what they
are doing is eliminating our people. They use
different policies to get our people off the land,
out of the reserves so they can get at the riches—
the minerals, other natural resources— instead of
letting people develop the land themselves and
become economically independent.
Setting out from the Friendship Centre on Vine Street, Vancouver.
"People are capable of solving their own
problems,” she said. “We don't need the
government to tell us what to do."
She spoke of her people dying from mercury
poisoning in Kenora. “Тһе government," she said,
"has no interest in whether the needs of our
people are met or not. The Department of Indian
Affairs and Northern Development spends $53
million just on administrative costs alone."
“In Kenora our people are dying of mercury
poisoning. A lot of people died in Japan from
mercury poisoning and they had exactly the same
symptoms. You start quivering, trembling, you get
depressed and lose weight. The same things that
happen with alcohol poisoning so the doctors and
the government blame it on alcohol. They don't
care whether we live or die.”
“That's why | went on the Caravan," she said.
"Because are people are suffering and the
government isn't doing anything about it."
The Arrow, Nov./Dec. 1974
HOW THE CARAVAN BEGAN 1
FOLLOWING THE RED PATH
12
II Vancouver to Saskatoon:
On The Road
On Saturday, September 14th, there was a big rally
in Vancouver. Two hundred people marched from
Hastings Street to the Court House, and held a
demonstration on the Court House steps. On the
next day, September 15th, the Native People's
Caravan left Vancouver.
Starting out, we had one van and about five
cars, We soon realized that we were going to have a
lot more people than cars, and that a lot of the cars
we had would never make it across the country. So
we decided to rent buses to take us from one city to
another.
The buses were quite expensive and we had to
pay for them with cash on the line. Money had to
be raised all the time. We had people on the phones
wherever we went, doing fundraising, and the P.R.
people would call up organizations to ask for sup-
port. We had slips printed up asking people for
donations, and we would send people into town to
raise whatever money they could. There was a lot
of pressure to raise money at the rallies, and it was
a tremendous strain on people, not knowing if we
were going to have enough money to get to the next
place. So every time we announced we had enough,
there'd be a big cheer.
The transportation was handled by white
people, because Native people going in to rent
buses would have wasted a lot of energy. Even
when we had the cash, we'd still be given a hard
time. So the whites went in to rent the buses, and as
long as they had cash they had no problem. Later,
when I joined up with the Caravan, I took over
responsibility for transportation.
The way we'd travel was to start early in the
morning, go all day, and push into the night. We
had a tight schedule to follow. Sometimes we'd
stay at the Indian Centres, and sometimes we'd
stay at churches— whatever people could arrange.
In the daytime we'd be busy organizing meetings
and looking after all the arrangements to keep the
Caravan moving, and in the evenings we'd hold
rallies. Sometimes we'd have a poor people's sup-
per, and sometimes we'd have a dance. After the
meetings, which were open to the public, we'd sit
up and talk.
Right from the beginning we had a good
feeling towards each other, a brother and sister
feeling. There was a real sharing of things, and very
little ripping each other off. We tried to keep
tobacco for the people who smoked, and we made
sure the kids had chocolate bars. And most of the
men treated the women with respect.
People who joined the Caravan felt Native
and proud—it accomplished that right away.
Young people started to get to know each other,
and the older people started talking to the young
ones. People felt a little cocky; they felt good.
We didn't feel any animosity towards us when
we stopped at stores or restaurants, when the bus
drivers would demand a coffee break. At that time
there were a lot of tourists around, and when they
saw a whole bunch of Native people they were
curious and would talk to us. At all times we main-
tained strong discipline. Our people were cour-
teous, and didn't develop the kind of chauvinism
you sometimes find in a large group of people.
I was surprised and glad, also, to see the at-
titude of the bus drivers. We were expecting a hard
time from them all the way, but they were really
polite. Even though they didn't spend much time
with us, because they would just drive us from one
major city to another, they were hoping we'd make
VANCOUVER TO SASKATOON: ON THE ROAD 13
it to Ottawa.
Different committees were formed to take care
of the different jobs. One was the P.R. committee.
Jim Wenjack and Debbie Mearns and a few others
went ahead to prepare for the Caravan as it came.
They would call up the media and let them know
we were coming, but their main job was to set up
places for us to stay. They did good work on a
limited budget. People would give them free meals,
and take them into their homes, but lots of times
they were just eating canned goods.
Then we had a security committee, to see that
nobody attacked or bothered us. A lot of people
would just walk in and talk to us, but I saw very lit-
tle harassment. Ed Burnstick was in charge of the
security.
Throughout the Caravan, leadership started to
develop as people began taking on responsibility.
Ginger Cóté started taking over as treasurer, which
was really tough because she had to hold onto the
money and say no to people. At times she was un-
popular, but she did her job well.
“Starting out, we had one van and about, five cars.”
14 FOLLOWING THE RED PATH
Diary, Vancouver, September 15, 1974
About 3:00 A.M.
The Native people of our movement gathered
yesterday afternoon in downtown Van to carry out
a demonstration march. It was quite successful
considering what our aims were (fundraising for
our cause) and of course support. We held a
benefit dance later in the evening at which White-
feather showed their support. Quite a huge
success also. A rally was held at the Communists’
Hall that | didn't attend so 1 can't make any just
remarks. After the dance everybody on the
Caravan had a rap session. The main purpose was
to get all the loose ends and disputes cleared up
before we set out. It's been a long day and I'm
going to get ready for another one. In other words,
go to bed. (Crash)
Member, Native People's Caravan
“After setting out from Vancouver, the Caravan went straight to Calgary."
There were committees to cook and take care
of the food, and the women organized a group to
take care of sanitation and diapers. The babies
were well looked after and the kids were always
well fed. There was a shortage of blankets—every-
body needed their own bedroll or sleeping
bag—but everywhere we went the church groups
would give us more.
One of our problems was keeping clean, be-
cause we had no time for dry cleaning or laundro-
mats. People worked hard at keeping themselves
clean, because of the stereotype that “Indians are
dirty and lazy.” Every time we had a chance, we
would wash our clothes by hand. Sometimes the
weather was a little cool and the clothes were hard
to dry, but we put them over radiators or hung
them up in the auditoriums while we were sleeping.
Wherever we went, too, we had people clean-
ing up. There were always people to see that every-
thing was taken care of, and I always made sure
that nobody was left behind. When the Caravan
got going, I usually travelled in a car so I could
keep an eye on all the buses.
We had a couple of people with medical ex-
perience, but whenever something happened that
we couldn’t handle, we’d phone the hospital and
go to the emergency department. We had some sick
people in Winnipeg, and the hospital we took them
to saw them right away.
After setting out from Vancouver the Caravan
went straight to Calgary, travelling all night
through the mountains. It was supposed to stop in
Kamloops but there wasn’t enough time. Then it
went to Hobbema, and from Hobbema to Edmon-
ton, arriving on Tuesday evening. A wine bash was
organized in Edmonton to raise money, and there
was a poor people’s supper with wieners and beans
and bannock.
In Edmonton the Native organizations told us
privately that they would like to support the Cara-
van, but that they couldn’t come out and say so be-
cause of their funding. The Caravan was a hot poli-
tical issue, and these organizations were afraid that
their grants might be cut off. But they said they
would give us financial support under the table,
and some of them did.
VANCOUVER TO SASKATOON: ON THE ROAD 15
Calgary
Diary, Native People's Caravan
Report on Road (Van to Calgary)
We're off now! Supposed to stop off on the road-
side to put signs on cars to let people know
Caravan is on its way. Stopped in Hope for 25
minutes to give time for other vehicles to catch
up. Told to continue, and there will be a brief stop
in Cache Creek ....
We've arrived in Calgary—Alberta Indian Friend-
ship Centre at 5:00 a.m. Few had coffee and went
to bed.
Report on Road (Calgary)
Good morning! Everyone was awakened at 9:30
a.m. Few men from the press came to the meeting
and the brothers and sisters had coffee. Others
did their usual cleaning ир... Majority in the
Caravan are young. The older people bless us and
their spirits are with us. Chief Ken Basil intro-
16 FOLLOWING THE RED PATH
duced himself as well as others on the executive
committee. Action of this movement will involve
all those who have a will to go. Ed Burnstick was
the next speaker regarding when we arrive in
Ottawa. We would like support financially,
morally and physically. AIM is not claiming to run
the whole shot of the movement. It's the people;
they're speakers for the people. There was a
question & answer period. The meeting adjourned
at 10:15 a.m. as we are on a very tight schedule.
Report on Road (Calgary to Edmonton)
We left the Centre at 10:30 a.m. Stopped on the
outskirts to gas up. We also added eight more
brothers and sisters to the bus. We arrived
Hobbema at 1:30 p.m. and no one knew we were
arriving. So we are trucking on into Edmonton...
We arrived at the Edmonton Indian Friendship
Centre at 3:00 p.m. We need $700.00 for the bus.
We need to raise and hustle more money ....
In Toronto, my wife Pauline got a phone call
from Nellie Carlsen, the President of Indian Rights
for Indian Women, who asked her what the Cara-
van was all about and then offered to give us sup-
port. They helped out with food and money, and
Nellie Carlsen went to speak at the rally in Ed-
monton. They were the only recognized Native
women's organization in Canada that officially
supported the Caravan.
From Edmonton the Caravan went to Saska-
toon, and then to Regina. But when the Caravan
was in Edmonton, | got a call from Louis that there
Hobbema
were money and organizational problems. Also,
Ed Burnstick was talking to the RCMP. There was a
police security group that he would call up to clear
the road so that rednecks wouldn’t harass us, but a
lot of people did not like what he was doing; they
felt it was wrong. Louis was away speaking at the
universities and couldn’t keep an eye on things,
and since I was one of the founders of the Caravan,
it was felt I should get there.
So I left my job in Barrie, got on a plane, and
went out to Regina.
VANCOUVER TO SASKATOON: ON THE ROAD 7
At the Regina Friendship Centre
18 FOLLOWING THE RED PATH
Ш Regina:
No Drinking Allowed
When I got to Regina I went to the Regina Friend-
ship Centre where a dance had been organized for
the Caravan. It was a good dance, with a live band
and a lot of young people. Afterwards I met the
whole group. I told them who I was and what I was
doing; everyone came, and I had a chance to talk.
We did this whenever someone joined the Caravan.
We'd meet in a circle, and people would just say
who they were.
We had meetings every night after the public
rallies to discuss what had taken place during the
day. We always met in a circle, and began with a
prayer. Then someone would talk about Native
spirituality. Everyone would take part, and any-
thing could be brought up. People would say what
they wanted and how they felt.
Sometimes there would be a little bit of what I
call “testifying” going on—people talking about
themselves and what they did—but the others were
very patient and very tolerant. They just let people
work things out. We might finish at 3:00 or 4:00 in
the morning, and then people would stay up and
talk, There were small groups of people talking, in
a fellowship kind of way, and young couples going
together.
The Caravan was a learning experience for
everybody on it. We were learning from each other
all the time, and sharing ideas. All of us had been
brainwashed and conditioned into accepting cer-
tain attitudes, so what we were doing on the Cara-
van was unconditioning ourselves. We had been
brainwashed into believing that Native people were
irresponsible and had no discipline; we were not
used to seeing very positive things in ourselves. But
now we began to change.
We had some older men on the Caravan that
people started to listen to and treat with respect. At
first people just called them “old men.” This is
what the conditioning had done to Native people—
it had taught us that our elders were a bunch of old
fools. But as the trip went on and we worked things
out living together, we began to see that the older
people had something to offer.
The Caravan also started breaking down tribal
differences. People began to see themselves as
Native, not as Cree or Blackfoot. Before, the dif-
ferent tribes used to feel some animosity towards
each other, but all those things were put down,
That's what we accomplished—feeling like Native
people, not “Métis” or “пай,” as the Depart-
ment of Indian Affairs would call us. We were
making the definitions of who we were.
That's where a lot of us learned never to go
back to calling ourselves non-status or Métis or
half-breed. So many of us at that time would rather
believe the Indian Act than our own mirrors, but
people were starting to think “Гт a Native per-
son” and feel good about it. I think the Métis
people who were on the Caravan really moved right
into the Native camp. I was already moving in that
direction.
The non-natives usually stayed in the back-
ground and encouraged our own people to speak.
Considering the mixed bag of non-native people
who joined the Caravan— Christians, Marxists,
atheists—they got along with each other quite well
and tried to be supportive. They put their differen-
ces aside and took direction from us.
We had very little sleep; a lot of people would
sleep on the buses. And the conditions were pretty
REGINA: NO DRINKING ALLOWED 19
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Ledger sheet from accounts book, Native People's Caravan
20 FOLLOWING THE RED PATH
tough. We were sleeping on hard basement floors.
But there was very little grumbling about the condi-
tions. I had a good feeling about the non-natives
too. They were not used to discomfort, but they
took it pretty well.
The Métis Society in Regina supported the
Caravan, but they were quite busy because they
were staging a sit-in at the Legislative Buildings the
same weekend that the Caravan was going
through. At the Friendship Centre they gave us a
free hand. There were pots at the Centre, and we
had people bringing us food. We had money to go
and buy more food, and a committee of women did
the cooking.
I was busy organizing financial support.
Basically, it was individual working people who
made it possible for the Caravan to get to Ottawa.
The unions did help, but they gave small amounts.
The Quakers and the CPC(ML)—maybe they
wouldn't like to be lumped together—also raised
money for us, but if it hadn't been for the nickels
and dimes of Canadian working people, we never
would have made it.
It was in Regina that we had a hassle over
discipline. On the night of the dance some of the
young people went uptown and got drunk. They
used our flyers to solicit funds, and then went
drinking with the money. We wanted people from
the Caravan to go into the bars to talk to people,
but not to drink.
It was a strong rule from the beginning that
there would be no drugs or alcohol allowed on the
Caravan, and that rule was strictly enforced. We
felt that if there was a lot of smoking or drinking
the police could use that to harass us. And people
really respected the fact that nobody was drinking.
It made quite a difference.
When these people came back to the dance it
was quite obvious that they had been drinking. So
after the dance was over, we asked to have a
meeting. There was a heavy debate that went
around for hours. It was a hard decision, and very
emotional, because for a couple of people it was
their own brothers and sisters that had been drink-
ing. Some people wanted us to be liberal and give
them another chance, but the majority felt that we
had to have discipline. Many of the people on the
Caravan were alcoholics, or had problems with
drugs, but they disciplined themselves and said no.
We felt that if these people were allowed to come
back our discipline would break down, and we
would never make it to Ottawa.
It went to a vote, and we decided to ask the
people to leave. We didn't have to finger them—
they knew who they were. They were told they
could wait till morning but they decided they would
leave right away. So they gathered their stuff up
and left.
We left for Winnipeg early the next day. We
didn't pick up that many people in Regina, because
some of the young people who had gone up to the
bars drinking had turned people off, but we did
leave Regina with more support. Some people from
the Métis Society joined us and some just joincd
right off the streets.
We had dealt with that problem; we had rein-
forced the idea of no drugs and no alcohol. But
that was a problem which haunted us, because the
same people who were kicked out, hitchhiked and
met up with us in Kenora. And that helped cause a
split.
REGINA: NO DRINKING ALLOWED 21
“We made it a very strong rule that the children would always stay with из.” THE CANADIAN PRESS
22 FOLLOWING THE RED PATH
IV Winnipeg:
Showdown Over the RCMP
We couldn't get the Friendship Centre in Winni-
peg, so the Unitarian Church gave us their building
to use. When the buses arrived it was Saturday
evening, September 21st, almost a week after the
Caravan had set out from Vancouver. Everyone
got out and set up their blankets and sleeping bags
in the basement.
It was kind of crowded so some of the
Christians, with good intentions, offered to house
the children separately. Ken Basil was our acting
spokesperson, and he made a good decision. Не
said: '*No.They're a part of us, and we're not going
to hand them over to anyone, no matter who they
are. They'll stick with us. If we have it rough,
they'll have it rough.” And I supported that; it was
the right decision.
We made it a very strong rule that the children
would always stay with us. When we were in Sud-
bury some kids were in a nursery, but our people
slept right in there with them. We felt that the
struggle was made for all of us, and that we should
go through everything together. We shouldn't
separate our people.
I think the Christians just thought it would be
easier. Different times they would say '*Well let's
take the kids,” but we felt very strong about it. We
had seen Children's Aid and the RCMP take our
children away from us, and we were determined to
keep them with us at all times—even if the
Christians were good people. And the kids were
feeling good about themselves too. They didn't
want to be separated from us.
We had a poor people's supper and the Chris-
tians helped us fix up a supper. When we spoke in
Winnipeg quite a bit of anti-white feeling came out
on stage, but later when everybody mixed together
a lot of non-natives said that they understood and
that they would still support the Caravan. People
just wanted to get things off their chest. The Cara-
van was a forum where people could talk about
what the boarding schools and churches had donc.
People were just working off some of their steam
against the system.
I took over responsibility for transportation
from non-natives in Winnipeg. АП of the other
committees were under Native leadership at the
time, and more people were joining the commit-
tees. I was selected for transportation because 1
had money connections and support.
The non-natives on the transportation com-
mittee were two people from Western Voice, а
radical newspaper in Vancouver. They helped with
transportation from the beginning, and wanted to
see a Native person be the head of it. | worked with
them very well. They knew what their job was, and
they tried to support, not lead
They were very political. At the time 1 was
kind of distrustful—I kept an eye on them—but I
found that my fears were overemphasized. They
were honourable and very principled, and they
were really concerned about Native people. They
had different political views from mine, but we
talked about politics together іп a friendly fashion.
One of our rented vehicles was overdue, and
that was the one we were using as the head car of
the Caravan. We had it all flagged up and every-
thing. In Winnipeg we picked some young brothers
to do security, and, while we were having our
meeting, the finance company for the rented car
tracked down the Caravan. They found our
security guards sleeping on the job and repossessed
the car. The next thing we noticed, when we got up
WINNIPEG: SHOWDOWN OVER THE RCMP 23
vehicles ad
on the
24 FOLLOWING THE RED PATH
in the morning, was that there was no head car.
First we thought it had been stolen and then we
realized what had happened. And it was taken right
in front of us. So much for our security! We re-
organized the security and Dennis Hanuse took
over.
At that time we didn't have a central commit-
tee. We just had individual leaders, and by the time
we got to Winnipeg quite a few people were dis-
satisfied with the leadership—people who had kind
of a radical background though they didn't belong
to any political party.
Some of us felt that Ed Burnstick and Ken
Basil were not keeping in touch with the people.
They were our spokespersons, but the only time we
saw them was during press conferences. Then
they'd go off and do things on their own.
People were demanding a more democratic
kind of Caravan, because the leadership was be-
coming too exclusive. They were in a pretty tough
position because they often had to make quick de-
cisions; they couldn't always run and call a big
meeting. A lot of people respected the leadership,
but they didn't like some of the methods they were
using. They'd just tell people what to do and ex-
pect them to do it, and people felt the lack of par-
ticipation. After Regina, we started demanding
that more people be involved.
The leadership didn't always have time to con-
sult, and there were personality conflicts, but the
major difference was the collaboration with the
RCMP. Burnstick was talking to the RCMP so we
wouldn't be harassed by rednecks. He would let the
RCMP know when we were coming and talk to them
about our security problems. There was a special
Security Force that he was in touch with, and they
were supposed to clear the road for us. Some
people on the Caravan had warrants out on them,
and the RCMP said that they wouldn't pick up any
of these people until after the Caravan. This is
what Burnstick was able to negotiate. But a lot of
people felt that we should have nothing to do with
the RCMP; we shouldn't even talk to them. Finally
the people took a stand. They said “Мо way.
They're our enemy, and we're not going to colla-
borate with them.”
We were able to raise enough money in Winni-
peg to pay for the buses to Kenora, but we were
kind of disappointed in the Native response. I felt
that this was where we would pick up the biggest
number of people, because Winnipeg has more
Native people than any other city in Canada. We
put out a call to the Native organizations, but they
didn't respond too well. Part of it was that we
arrived on a weekend, and though our P.R. com-
mittee had gone ahead they couldn't get around to
all the Native organizations by Friday afternoon.
These were “9:00 to 5:00 Indians," but our sche-
dule was all hours, all times.
We felt that the people from the Native or-
ganizations backed off on us. I think if they had
been in control of the Caravan it would have been a
different thing, but they would have had to join us
and work their way into the leadership like anyone
else. And some didn't want that.
The whole thing in Winnipeg was really poor.
We overestimated how people would respond to
the Caravan because we didn't really understand
the conditions there. Everything is backward, and
there's a lot of heavy drinking because of the con-
ditions.
Some of the Caravan people who went out to
the bars turned people off instead of turning them
on, because they weren't drinking. They went in
drinking coke and saying “We're part of the
Caravan . . .”, and the people in the bars resented
it. We just expected everyone to come rushing to
support us, so it was kind of a rude awakening. We
were more realistic about things from there on. It
was a slap in the face, but it did wake us up.
WINNIPEG: SHOWDOWN OVER THE RCMP 25
“There were a few hundred of us, and we marched from the Kenora Fellowship Centre to the school auditorium,
right through the centre of town. ”
26 FOLLOWING THE RED PATH
V Kenora:
The Leadership Splits
Kenora meant many things to many people. We
were all a little nervous because this was just after
the occupation of the park. We didn't know if we
were going to be facing a big mob of vigilantes or
what was going to happen, but we were well pre-
pared and well disciplined. This was where Wayne
Stonechild and some of his people caught up to us
from Regina.
We decided to hold a rally at the high school, but
we were staying at the Kenora Fellowship Centre
on the other side of town—about a ten minute
walk away. There were a few hundred of us, and
we marched from the Fellowship Centre to the
school auditorium, right throught the centre of
town.
It was like a ghost town—the streets were
bare. The RCMP and OPP must have worked to-
gether in getting the rednecks off the streets, be-
cause we walked right past the bars and didn't see
anybody. They might have been afraid that a poli-
tical confrontation in Kenora would give us a lot
more support across the country.
We had a feeling that our people would sup-
port us in Kenora, and that’s the way it turned out.
The Fellowship Centre treated us very well, and
many people said that they would like to join us
but couldn’t leave because of their families. We
had to raise more money to get to Thunder Bay so
we had a pow-wow at the Centre on Monday night.
There was a lot of drumming, and people spoke. It
was really good.
In Kenora it was decided that the men would
eat first (in the old traditional warrior way) and the
women would eat later. I opposed it but the
majority ruled, and the sisters went along with it
reluctantly. The Fellowship Centre gave us a fantastic
meal of Kentucky Fried Chicken but there wasn’t
enough chicken to go around, so without us
noticing it the sisters just put some aside for them-
selves. All the brothers felt pretty good, lining up
for the food and laughing. But by Thunder Bay
there was such strong opposition that we went back
to the other way, everybody eating together.
One of the things we tried to deal with on the
Caravan was some of the sexism within our own
minds and attitudes. There were some brothers
who went into the kitchen periodically to help with
the tables and clean up, but a lot of times the men
were in the kitchen just so they could get snacks.
Some of the younger brothers didn’t want to do
kitchen det and they tried to use tradition—so-
called tradition—to get out of it. When they were
asked to pick up the mop they would say “ОВ no,
warriors don't do that," but some of the older
brothers would say **Well everyone gets it dirty.
We should all help each other.” Most people felt
that way.
We were looking at the women's question,
trying to understand it and treat our sisters better.
We were looking at gay people, too, and seeing
that they were human beings like the rest of us. We
had a couple of gay sisters on the Caravan and they
weren't put down; they were treated with respect. I
think a lot of us were just opening our cyes and
ears for the first time.
But in Kenora the problems with the leader-
ship were coming to a head. People were dis-
gruntled with the leadership, and Ed Burnstick was
very paranoid, seeing Communists under every
tree. He and Ken Basil felt that they were losing
control.
At the same time, the people who had been
KENORA: THE LEADERSHIP SPLITS 27
Pow-wow at the Fellowship Centre in Kenora
asked to leave the Caravan for drinking arrived
back at the Caravan and asked if they could rejoin.
They had hitchhiked on their own from Regina. Ed
Burnstick opposed it and I supported him, because
I felt that these people had had their chance; if we
allowed them back in, then other people could go
and drink too. But we lost the vote.
Ed Burnstick and Ken Basil were dissatisfied
with the vote because it meant that they had to an-
swer more to the people now, and so they decided
to leave. They were encouraging other people to
leave with them, and when Louis Cameron heard
that they were prepared to break up the Caravan,
he came back from his speaking engagements and
rejoined us in Kenora. We said to the people,
**We've come this far. Do we disband the Caravan
or continue?” And the majority of the people said
“We want to keep going." About 17 people left,
out of more than 200, and the rest decided that
they would stay.
The next morning, when we were getting ready
to go, Basil and Burnstick left. They said they were
going to the States, and were given some money to
28 FOLLOWING THE RED PATH
leave, but then they decided to form a Caravan and
go to Ottawa themselves. We asked them not to
hold any press conferences and they said that they
wouldn't, but when they arrived in Winnipeg they
did hold one. Later they said that Communists
were trying to take over the Caravan, which was
not true at all because no groups were trying to
take over.
Wayne Stonechild emerged as a spokesperson
at that time. He and 1 were temporarily in charge,
зо we got people on the buses and got the buses to
Thunder Bay.
I think Burnstick really felt that he could deal
with the RCMP, but many of us who had suffered
personally from them had no trust for them. We
saw them as our traditional enemy, as the force
created to occupy our land, to oppress us, and even
to take our children away from us. Many of us felt
very bitter at just hearing their name, and wanted
nothing to do with them. Myself, I had great
hatred towards the RCMP.
When I was younger, quite a few years ago, 1
was working in the sugar-beet fields in Lethbridge,
Alberta when I was picked up by the RCMP. They
were looking for one of my older half-brothers. He
had been into a lot of trouble with the law, and
they thought that they could find him through me.
So they picked me up and took me to the police
station for questioning.
They started by asking me where my brother
was. They said that he had been involved in a
jewellery robbery, and they wanted to know where
he was and where he had put the jewels. I didn't
know, but even if I had known I wouldn't have
told them, and I told them so. So they hit me, and I
fought back. I defended myself, and being a for-
mer boxer I can look after myself pretty well. I hit
one and knocked him down, and then they decided
to give it to me. Four of them started to beat me
up.
1 lost consciousness and woke up a couple of
times while they kept on beating me. They tried
different tactics. I remember lying on the floor af-
ter I woke up. One acted friendly towards me and
said he didn't agree with this—all I had to do was
tell them about my brother—and cleaned the blood
off my face. One eye was closed then, my nose was
smashed, a couple of teeth were knocked out anda
couple of my ribs were cracked, but I told him
where to go. Then the other guys came in, and they
weren’t so friendly. I would have been killed, but
they had to be careful because they had no real
reason for keeping me there. It was just an in-
terrogation, not a real arrest, and my friends were
all waiting outside.
I spit in one guy's face because they were
calling me all kinds of names, racial names. Then,
when they realized that they weren’t going to get it
out of me by beating me, I heard them say, “Let's
try something еве.” And one of them came over—
I think he was a sergeant—saying that I didn't look
like an Indian, why was I with Indians, they knew 1
was a breed, and I looked like an Irishman. From
my previous record they knew my background, and
they knew that I had Irish blood in me. He said
that he would stop all the beating, that I could stop
everything and they would let me go right there. All
1 had to do was say that I wasn’t an Indian, that 1
was an Irishman, because they don’t beat up white
men. I told them to go screw themselves. And I
think that right there they did me a favour. Because
of being Métis, I'd always had this struggle within
myself, whether I was Native or White. And they
helped me decide.
They kicked my legs so I couldn't move and
then said “Get him out." They had to drag me
through an office, and ГП always remember it—
one eye was closed and the other was closing, but I
could see the people in the office turning their
backs so they would not be a witness to what was
happening. They turned and faced the other way.
And when they got me to the door they threw me in
the back alley.
When you get a heavy beating, after awhile
your body just becomes immune to it; you can't
feel the pain anymore. My friends told me later
that I had been interrogated for four hours. Four
hours of beating. When they told me that, I could
hardly talk, but I swore. My friends took me to the
sugar-beets, and I couldn't work for a couple of
months. It took me almost three months to recover
from that beating.
So that was my personal thing against the
RCMP. When any of our people tried to collaborate
with them or talk to them, I would just get furious.
It was a personal thing, but also a historical thing. I
understood the role of the RCMP. And I knew how
they used and degraded our Native symbols. Very
few of our own people know that the symbolic pro-
tector of Cree women is the buffalo. By using the
buffalo on their uniforms and their cars, the
RCMP are saying that //rev are the protectors of
Native women, of all Native people. But everybody
knows that in the hundred years of their history it's
been the opposite. They've raped and killed our
mothers and sisters.
And so a lot of us were opposed to having any-
thing to do with the RCMP. Some of the people who
did not understand the history, people like Burn-
stick who did not investigate or make analysis,
would say **Well that's in the past; that's not hap-
pening now." But the RCMP riot on Parliament
Hill was to show us that history repeats itself. The
RCMP have a tradition to follow and that's what
they live up to.
KENORA: THE LEADERSHIP SPLITS 29
In Thunder Bay, twelve people were elected to be on the Central Committee. Shown here (from left to right) are Ken
Dennis, Bill Creely, Wayne Stonechild, Ron Seymour, Wandering River, Dennis Hanuse (standing) and Vern Harper.
30 FOLLOWING THE RED PATH
VI Thunder Bay:
A New Leadership Emerges
In Thunder Bay all of our people met together for
an election. We had a lot more people then, so we
decided that we should have more people to speak
for us. It would be more democratic that way. This
idea of a Central Committee came from the people
themselves.
Twelve people were nominated and we were
going to have a vote, when someone suggested
“Why not make all of them the Committee?" Since
it seemed that everybody was in favour of all
twelve people, it was felt that this was the best
thing to do. They were asked if they would accept
the responsitility and they all agreed that they
would. Then they went on stage and spoke.
There were people on the Committee from all the
areas we passed through. Dennis Hanuse, Debbie
Mearns, Larry Joseph and Ken Dennis were from
B.C.; Skip Greenstalk was from Alberta; Wayne
Stonechild and myself were from Saskatchewan;
Jim Wenjack, Louis Cameron and Ron Seymour
were from Ontario. Then there was Bill Creely, an
old Saskatchewan former chief, and a young Plains
traditionalist called Wandering River. Everybody
felt good about it too, because there were no hard
feelings.
We had everything on the Central Committee.
We had young people and middle-aged people and
elders. We had people who couldn't read or write,
and people with a university education. We all
worked together and helped each other.
In white organizations one person becomes the
leader, but we were exercising a different type of
leadership—one that represented the people. We
all had different qualities and abilities, so when dif-
ferent issues came up we could deal with them.
That’s how the Central Committee was designed.
People at the general meetings would decide
what to do the next day and then the Central
Committee would put these decisions into action.
Any discussions would go around and around until
an opinion came out that everyone felt was right. It
was always done that way. It was a traditional
Native way of making decisions and it would take
hours. Some of the non-natives used to get a little
impatient, but the discussion would go on until we
reached a democratic decision that served all the
people. The Central Committee would meet after-
wards.
This is where leadership started to develop.
Not the kind of leadership that was just in there for
the money or for themselves, but people who were
really dedicated, like Wayne Stonechild and Ron
Seymour and Louis Cameron. Leaders who served
the people instead of acting like bosses.
But the media didn't want to deal with the
Central Committee. They wanted one spokes-
person, and Louis Cameron was signified because
he was the leader of the armed occupation in
Kenora. This was the white way of thinking about
leadership. The majority of us, and even Louis
himself, wanted a more democratic type of
organization. I think when Louis rejoined the
Caravan in Kenora it reassured people; his prestige
and his influence made people feel better. But after
our meeting in Thunder Bay there was such a good
spirit—resistance spirit—that people decided they
would walk to Ottawa if they had to.
We had a rally in Thunder Bay that was one of.
the best on the Caravan. Quite a few people from
the community came and different people spoke,
THUNDER BAY: A NEW LEADERSHIP EMERGES 3M
including Louis, Ken Dennis, Dennis Hanuse, Ron
Seymour and myself. There was real fellowship
among the people, and feelings of Native pride
were really coming out.
There was quite a bit of anti-white feeling
coming out, too, among the young people. The
older ones like myself tried to restrain it, but we
thought it was a healthy sign. We thought it was
better to work it out than to hold it all in. Non-
natives found it hard to understand why Native
people were so frustrated.
I remember one time later in the Embassy—
the building we occupied in Ottawa—a supporter
came up to me and said, **Now you're on the Cen-
tral Committee. How can you tolerate this? Look
at the walls. It says ‘honky eat shit’ and *honky
this’ and ‘honky that." I looked at it and said
** Well personally І don't approve of it, but isn't it
better that these young people write it on the walls
than hit you over the head with a club or take you
and grab you by the throat? They're working out
years of frustration, and they can get some of it out
that way, instead of doing it by force.” I think the
man I was talking to understood a little bit. Young
women who were with us had been raped by white
men; young men had been beaten up. But on the
Caravan, people were beginning to feel comfort-
able with themselves and their Native identity.
There was an older Jewish fellow called Abe
who had joined us and was with us all the way; he
was very supportive. A lot of times there was some
hostility towards him just because his skin was
white, but he held his ground and people started to
respect him.
Whenever we had free time people would walk
out into town and see things. Some people on the
Caravan had never been out of their areas, so и
was an education for them. And I really started to
respect a lot of our people there, because there
were some heavy alcohol and drug users. There was
a group from B.C. who had totally quit. І knew it
was hard for them, that a lot of the time they felt
they needed to have a drink or to toke up or some-
thing, but they were really serious and they helped
to give direction to other people. They were people
from the Cache Creek Warrior Society. They in-
spired everybody.
32 FOLLOWING THE RED PATH
We took things seriously on the Caravan but
not too seriously. People used to play practical
jokes on each other. I remember one time when we
had to get money for gas at about 5:00 in the morn-
ing, and 1 went to wake up Ginger Cóté, the
treasurer. | found four young security guards
sleeping all around her. She had security to see that
nothing happened to the money, because that was
our transportation, but 1 think some of the
brothers were just interested in being near her. She
was a good looking woman, and they liked her.
I went and told Louis, **Come here. See this?
Look at our security; they're supposed to be guard-
ing her.” We stepped right over them, reached un-
derneath the pillow, took out the money, and put it
back. And Ginger and the security guards didn't
even know that we had been there. In the morning
we told the brothers they'd better do security a lit-
tle better, but they didn't know what we were
talking about.
Half a dozen people joined the Caravan in
Thunder Bay. At each stop we expected a lot more
people to join us, but because the Caravan was
travelling so fast people didn't have a chance to
catch hold of it. One of the mistakes we made was
to concentrate on the cities. If we'd made a couple
of detours and gone into the reserves we would
have had reserve support, even if we didn't get that
many people joining. It wouldn't have been that
difficult, because we were coming across the Trans-
Canada which goes through or near quite a few
reserves.
In Thunder Bay we had to raise some more
money. The Unitarian Church, where we stayed,
did a lot of work and supported us well. We were
always able to raise just enough money to charter
the buses, and some people with cars would join us
at each city. We stayed in Thunder Bay a few days,
and got ready to go down to the next place. It was
Sault Ste. Marie.
Thunder Bay was the turning point of the
Caravan because it was there that we decided we
were going to be successful. There were outside
forces trying to put us down, but after the Central
Committee came together people were determined
to make it, one way or another.
Day to day people ask us
why do you demonstrate,
why the guns, why the caravans,
why the arrogance?
We must remember the men, women and children
who suffered and died before us,
we must remember the high percentage
of Indians being held in prisons throughout
the country,
the high suicide rate, the drugs, the alcohol,
the psychological damage caused by cultural
genocide,
the land steals,
the tarpaper shacks that chill you to the bone,
the monthly welfare cheques,
the endless hunt for a non-existent job,
the hunger pangs from lack of proper food,
the junkies looking for a fix and O-D-ing,
the people on the street,
the rapings, the beatings, the murders by the RCMP,
begging the DIA for scraps of money
for projects written and typespaced according
to the
supreme crap of the DIA and government
You who ride your Cadillac, your LTD,
watch your coloured TV in your warm protected
air-conditioned home in the suburbs,
you can no longer hide it under a table or behind
а door.
The problem is now out in the open.
You are the problem,
the problem of pollution, political corruption,
genocide, imperial international mediation,
stealing of resources through violent corrupt
tactics.
You go to your religious gatherings
and read your ten commandments
which you have broken like the treaties you broke.
Yes, it is this illusion which you live in
which will destroy you and what you stand for,
you will never live up to
the highest development of a human being.
So when you wonder
why there are demonstrations, occupations,
movements,
try to open your eyes and ears
and activate that rusty brain
because we have found you out,
through 500 years of patient quiet struggle,
and we mean business.
The life and death of a race and culture is at stake.
We will no longer be passive and liberal.
We will fight rather than die in silence,
in jails, on dope, on alcohol, and by the rest
of the tools of oppression you have devised.
Member, The Native People's Caravan, 1974
THUNDER BAY: A NEW LEADERSHIP EMERGES 33
Dancing in a school auditorium in Sault Ste. Marie
34 FOLLOWING THE RED PATH
УП The Soo and Sudbury:
Picking Up Speed
On the trip from Thunder Bay to the Soo I was
travelling in a car and could stop at some of the re-
serves along the way. We couldn't spend much
time there, but we talked to a few people. It seemed
that there were power struggles on the reserves,
with the Department of Indian Affairs and local
agencies lining up on one side to help certain fami-
lies get control.
Just outside the Soo, there was a young guy
hitchhiking from one reserve to another. When we
got talking to him and told him about the Caravan
he just stopped what he was doing and came with
us—all the way to Ottawa. We would often pick up
hitchhikers on the highway. All the people would
yell, **There's Indians!" and the bus would stop
and we'd give them a ride. So we picked up some
people that way, and I think the Caravan had a real
effect on all of them.
Our P.R. group went ahead of us into Sault
Ste. Marie to make arrangements. The Friendship
Centre there co-operated with us very well but it
was too small for all of us, so they helped us to find
a big school and we stayed in the auditorium. We
left just when school was getting started.
We appreciated the showers in that school be-
cause not all of the places we stayed at had them.
Sometimes men and women showered together;
sometimes the women would be by themselves; and
sometimes the single men went into the boys'
shower. But basically everyone just shared the
washrooms. People's washrooms, we called them.
Nobody seemed to get hung up on things.
The rally in the Soo was really good, because it
had one of the bigger turnouts from the reserves.
There are quite a few reserves around the Soo, and
some of the people from the area came in to sup-
port us. Jim Dumont, who is a spiritual person
living in that area, came with his wife Edna Mani-
towabi. Everybody had a chance to say a few
words.
Just before we left to go to Sudbury a couple
of white punks from the high school came to make
some trouble, but our people were already on the
buses so we just ignored them. People were tired,
but their spirits were high.
Sudbury was kind of an exciting time. Our
group was getting really big—over 200—and we
had two churches because we couldn't stay in just
one. They were down the street from one another,
up on a hill. Dr. Peter Newberry from Laurentian
University, who has worked with Native people,
came out in support. He and some of the church
people helped prepare food. People were hungry
and the food was good.
We had our rally in a church, and I think I was
one of the first speakers. І got up and made an ап-
ti-Catholic speech and that set the tone for the
evening. I think the whole rally focused on de-
nouncing the Church. The people who had set it up
for us were Catholic priests, so they were very up-
set. Then some union people from the workers"
organizations came up and spoke in support. This
was one of the main places that the unions came
out. It was a good, militant, anti-church rally. The
church people spoke to a couple of Native people
later, but they made sure they avoided me.
We had a couple of bad incidents in Sudbury.
We had to march from a hall to a school across
town, and it was quite a march. There were a lot of
us, and the drums were going. A car got between
THE SOO AND SUDBURY: PICKING UP SPEED 35
"People were learning how to deal with the media, but it was a new experience for из.”
some of the people and almost ran them over, so a
couple of brothers kicked at the car door. Later the
people in that car came back to where our car was,
and slashed the tires.
Then a couple of our young boys were caught
shoplifting. We were really concerned about that,
because we didn't quite know how to handle it. We
were going to discipline them quite harshly when
they were released. There was a whole debate about
what we should do with them, and we considered
all kinds of things. Finally it wasn't left in our
hands, because the authorities sent these boys back
home.
I think tempers were getting a little short in
Sudbury, because discipline started to break down
a bit. We had some time on our hands, and people
were going uptown. And people were getting kind
of worried. At this time Louis Cameron was doing
36 FOLLOWING THE RED PATH
P.R. work in Hamilton, and the media reported
him saying that people from the Caravan could
strap bombs on their backs and take them into Par-
liament. And that's quite true; we could have. But
they made it sound like we were going to do it. This
got the people on the Caravan and our supporters
quite upset. It seemed that some of the media
wanted us to start fighting among ourselves but the
Committee decided that we should support Louis,
so we made a statement saying that we supported
Louis and that he was our spokesperson.
People were learning how to deal with the
media, but it was a new experience for us. A lot of
us had never done it before, and we sometimes
thought that the media people were personally re-
sponsible for a lot of our problems. When the
Caravan was starting out we got bad publicity at
every city, and that turned a lot of people off. We
had not developed any rapport with the media, and
at first a lot of our people harassed and attacked
them, just like they were the enemy. Some of them
are, of course, because some are anti-Indian, but
the majority are not. As we met and talked with
them we realized that they were just doing their
job, and that it was really the publishers, the
owners of the newspapers, who set the policies.
Later, as the Caravan went on and the leader-
ship became more democratic, we got people with
experience to deal with the media. We started to
learn how to talk to them, how to try to gain their
sympathy and win them to some kind of under-
standing—not turn them off.
We were travelling pretty fast by then, going
day and night. We had to get up very early in the
morning and go to bed very late at night, and we
were always worried about whether we could raise
enough money. People were getting tired.
THE SOO AND SUDBURY: PICKING UP SPEED 37
“There was a Native awareness that was really coming out.”
KELLY WHITE OF THE NATIVE PEOPLE'S EMBASSY
PHOTOGRAPHED AT RADIO CARLETON, JANUARY 1975, BY BRUCE PATON
38 FOLLOWING THE RED PATH
VIIL Time Out to Rest
Time was getting short to get to Ottawa, and
people were starting to get edgy. We'd had some
meetings because of the shoplifting, and some of
the leadership had been a little hard on the people.
A number of us had used heavy words—told the
people to shape up, and swore at them. Myself, I
remember speaking and swearing quite a bit.
Our next stop was Toronto, but on the way
down we stopped off at one of the Quakers’
camps. During the Caravan there was great distrust
towards the Christians, and we referred to them as
“Christians.” I don't think we got that much sup-
port from the Catholic Church—it was mostly
Lutheran and United. The Quakers, ! felt, played
quite a good role, but some of us kept a very close
eye on them and still do.
The Quakers had been with us since Winni-
peg. Some of them were the same people who had
put their bodies on the line in Kenora, so people
trusted them. One of them was a woman, Joleigh
Commandant, who was married to a Native person
and a registered Indian herself, because marrying
an Indian man makes you an Indian woman under
the Indian Act. She was an interesting person be-
cause she had been in the civil rights movement in
the States in the 60s. She tried not to lead but sup-
port, and the Quakers in general played a suppor-
tive role. People like Joleigh were well-respected
because they worked hard.
The Quakers had arranged for us to spend a
day at one of their camps, and it was really good.
We got there in the early morning and spent the
whole day there. This was in the fall, and the
weather was warm. It was a cottage type of place,
and we had a real good meal. Some pcople went
swimming, and a lot of brothers were playing base-
ball and throwing a football around. People were
talking to each other and young couples were
holding hands.
There was a lot of romancing going on during
the Caravan. It always happens, in an occupation
or anything like that. People who were my age and
older noticed what was going on but we just wat-
ched it; in fact, we were kind of pleased. In my
time, the 50s, we'd seen our men going after white
women and Native women going after white men.
Because of the pressure to assimilate—from the
churches, the government and Indian Affairs—
they were ashamed of their own people. And here
we saw a reversal of it. We saw young women in-
terested in their own men and vice versa, and it
made us feel good.
There was a Native awareness that was really
coming out. People were wearing red ribbons, but
they'd wear them in different ways; they wanted to
show that they were together but also that they
were individuals.
Brothers who'd never had their hair braided
started to braid their hair and wear chokers. It
wasn’t that braiding your hair or wearing a choker
made you a Native person, but it was like exer-
cising a right—if you wanted to do it you should be
able to, without being ridiculed or persecuted. For
some of the men it was the first time they'd ever
had their hair braided.
The women started to look at themselves too,
and to feel better about themselves. I could remem-
ber the whole mass assimilation thing of the 505—1
went through that—and here, in 1974, I saw the
opposite. Native women were washing off their
make-up and braiding thcir hair. There was onc
sister who had blonde hair when she started with
TIME OUT TO REST 39
the Caravan, but by the time we were finished she
had dyed her hair back to her natural colour.
Before a rally, it would be just like a dress re-
hearsal. The men would be getting their hair done
and it would take a long ti ї was like a ritual.
Sometimes it was used as an introduction. A young
brother would walk up to a sister and say **Would
you braid my hair?” and if she didn't know how
another sister would show her. A lot of relation-
ships started that way.
All during the Caravan people were talking
about things and seeing things. It was really an
educational trip—we showed that we could do this
kind of thing without going off to another country
on a student exchange. At the beginning of the
Caravan, the idea was just “Let’s get a whole
bunch of people across from one place to another
and be on the Hill on the 30th,” not realizing what
we could do on the Caravan itself by way of poli-
tical education. Most of the people who were not
politically-minded when they joined the Caravan,
were when they left. Their whole level of under-
standing changed, and their dedication became
quite clear. This happened for young people and
Older people; the Caravan was educational for
everybody.
People like Wandering River and Bill Creely
were really good for people my age and younger,
because we had been conditioned since childhood
to reject our old people and the people who talked
about spiritualism. Here they were facing us, and
we had a contradiction to deal with.
Bill Creely was an elder in every sense of the
word. He recorded the history and kept it in his
mind; he was able to give interpretations of what
he'd seen; he knew the legends and stories of the
Cree people; he spoke his own language and Cree
very well. He had served in the Canadian Armed
Forces and had fought in Europe. He could talk
about the 7405 and '50s, about how the state had
tried to assimilate Native people. He told us about
whole reserves being moved from one place to the
other, and about people actually being kid-
napped—how the RCMP would come with arms
and move whole communities from one place to
another. He had an understanding of the Caravan,
and was for it all the way.
Wandering River was not political at all but he
had a pretty good look at political things, and he
40 FOLLOWING THE RED PATH
knew a lot more about what was going on than
people gave him credit for. He could tell beautiful
legends. He dressed in a traditional way, and had
long braids. He was short in stature, but big in the
ways of his people. At that time I thought some of
the things he talked about were just foolish; now,
I'm beginning to understand. But Wandering River
taught us many things. He tried to live like a Native
person and be in tune with himself, without ex-
ploiting anybody.
At the meetings you could see what people
were coming through. There was always real strong
fellowship between people. We started talking
about our experiences in the boarding schools,
about our contempt for the government and the
church, and how they worked hand in hand. A lot
of people were talking about Marxism and
socialism. All this rhetoric was new, and people
were kind of investigating it. But many of us felt
that the capitalist system— where a few rich people
own all the land, the businesses and the re-
sources— was fundamentally antagonistic to the
traditional Native way of life. Most of the people
on the Caravan had gone through a heavy back-
ground, had been disillusioned by Native organ
tions and the churches, and they were looking
around—experimenting with new ideas and new
thoughts. Some people were attracted to socialism
because of what it had done for other oppressed
nations in the Third World.
Most of the people on the Caravan were from
the cities, but a lot of people had joined from the
reserves. That was a sharing thing too, and the
ones who were poverty-stricken—like the ones who
had lost their culture, their mother's language—
were affected the most. The ones from the reserves
who could speak their languages really started to
understand the value of what they had.
In every place we stopped, local people would
tell us about the local conditions. We'd ask people
how they felt about things. It was a learning situa-
tion all the time, and as we travelled our under-
standing grew. Some of the B.C. people had just
come for housing, but with different people joining
the Caravan, and different ideas being expressed,
the Manifesto began to form. The demand for
Native education came out of the discussion of the
boarding schools. We knew it was very important
that we start to understand the role of education,
101,
у
LD
and that we start fighting to get control of the edu-
cation of Native people.
We talked about spiritualism, and offered
prayers. I think that was when we were beginning
to understand Native spiritualism. Now, in 1978,
there is a strong spiritualist movement going right
across the country and I think the Caravan helped
to start that re-awakening. Every nation has some
spiritual direction, or it should, and ours is not an
exception.
We began to see ourselves as an oppressed
nation, not as a national minority. We started to
understand how the Indian Act is used to divide us,
but we were moving to overcome that. Living to-
gether and working together on the Caravan we
began to see that we do have the same problems,
the same things to overcome, and it helped to unify
us. But it came from a gut feeling that we are a
nation of people, a Red Nation, and that it’s up to
us to put it into language that people can under-
stand.
There was always that feeling towards one
another, a strong, Native feeling. Every time we'd
sit down and have the drumming going, it was just
like the heart of a nation, beginning to beat.
You could see how people respected each
other. Everybody was kind of taking inventory of
who they were and what they were and what they
wanted. At all the meetings people would talk, and
flashes would come into them about their own per-
sonal experiences, about the alcoholism. We
wished that a lot more people had been with us. We
realized that not all of them could be and that some
Z^
| Non 105
© жа
didn't want to be. But we had a purpose. We were
determined to get to Ottawa.
We had a meeting before we left the camp,
and one of the sisters got hold of me and gave mc
hell for being hard on the people and swearing at
them. I realized I was wrong, and before we got on
the bus I asked the people if they would forgive me.
I said I had no right to talk to them like that and I
would make sure it didn't happen again. The
people said that it was O.K., just forget it. Then we
got on the bus, and everybody headed for Toronto.
But I think that extra rest rcally did us good.
"When People Are Calling, You Go"
Eetsah talked of her trip across the country.
"The trip to Ottawa was a wonderful
experience," she said. “Everywhere along the way
people welcomed us. We stayed in all different
kinds of places— schools, churches, Indian
Friendship Centres, a Quaker camp. All different
kinds of people and organizations supported us
and gave us money. Both old and young—a
tremendous response, warm and friendly.
"Everywhere along the way there were press
conferences and pow wows, rallies and benefit
dances. It was a tremendous experience to feel
the unity among our people and hear of the
support of many different organizations like trade
unions and church groups, etc.
"The government has tried to divide us, but
we will not be divided any longer. We will decide
our own destiny; we can make our own contri-
butions to a better world for everyone. We have
done so in the past and can do so again."
The Arrow, Nov./Dec. 1974
TIME OUT TO REST 4
Louis Cameron at Anicinabe Park, August, 1974 BETTER READ GRAPHICS
42 FOLLOWING THE RED PATH
IX Trouble in Toronto
The local AIM chapter in Toronto did not support
us, and our people were really disappointed that
they didn't. At the rally in Thunder Bay, the word
was that the Native community in Toronto was up-
set, The Toronto Committee had never fully recog-
nized Louis Cameron's leadership, and when Ken
Basil and Ed Burnstick left the Caravan in Kenora
it thought that the so-called ''leadership" was
gone.
This Committee included Alec Akiwenzie,
Judi Norris, Roger Obonsawin, Paul Ritchie and
Pauline Ross (a non-native woman). They met in a
secret meeting at the Paramount but would
not allow my wife, Pauline, to attend, though they
were happy to have her do the cooking when the
Caravan arrived later on. At that time, the Toronto
Committee had the potential to be a powerful
Native group. Even though Winnipeg and Regina
had more Native people, Toronto had the organi-
zations and it had good workers. And at one time it
had one of the largest AIM chapters, with over 200
members. The people on the Committee had the
opportunity to put it all together, but they
diminished their effectiveness by dragging their
heels,
What happened then was that the CPC(ML),
along with some other groups, started to organize
support in Toronto. There was a clear under-
standing from the beginning that the CPC(ML) was
to stay in the background and play a supportive
role. They had given us good support during
Kenora—had helped us financially and worked
under our direction. When Louis and I were in
Montréal we talked to Hardial Bains, the leader of
the CPC(ML), and he agreed that they would again
give us financial and organizational support, and
accept Native leadership.
Hardial tried to live up to that, but many of
his followers did not. Instead of staying in the
background they tried to lead. The idea of Native
people telling them what to do was unheard of, and
that chauvinism, especially in Ontario, was what
caused some of the trouble.
A whole anti-communist thing started hap-
pening in Toronto because some people thought
that the CPC(ML) was running the Caravan, This
was not true at all; there were only four or five
Native supporters of Marxist-Leninism on the
Caravan, including myself. So Louis Cameron and
Wayne Stonechild flew down from Thunder Bay to
talk to people and straighten things out.
One of the members of the CPC(ML) had con-
ducted himself very poorly, and some of the people
in Toronto used that as an out, as an excuse to say
that the Caravan was communist-controlled. The
people who were putting themselves forward as the
Toronto leadership of AIM had personal grudges
against Louis that went back a long time, even be-
fore the armed occupation at Kenora, and this gave
them an excuse to withdraw their support.
There was a lot of red-baiting by this self-
appointed leadership. They would attack com-
munism and denounce people on the Caravan for
accepting support from radical groups, but they
did not analyze the situation; they just ranted and
raved. Even some of the white radical groups used
the involvement of the CPC(ML) as an excuse to
back off. They worked together in Vancouver, but
across the prairies that broke down. The Com-
munist Party of Canada sent only a token force,
and some of the Trotskyist groups didn't even pet
involved. Still, there were quite a few individual
TROUBLE IN TORONTO 43
radicals who supported the Caravan and gave it
money.
What a lot of people seemed to forget was that
the Caravan was called by Native people! The
Caravan was open to all our people, and if they
had been a part of it and joined us, the CPC(ML)
would not even have been noticed. But all they did
was criticize, not participate.
I think one weakness of the Caravan and the
Central Committee was that we didn't stand up
strongly enough when we saw the media and the
CPC(ML) treating one person as the leader. That
wasn't in the best interests of the Caravan, and we
failed Louis by allowing them to do that. By
making a hero out of him, the media and the
CPC(ML) were putting him up on a pedestal. And
his enemies were quite happy to see that happen,
because then they could isolate him. At different
times when we thought Louis was choosing the
wrong tactic we did not confront him; we just let it
go. We were willing to take credit for the good
things, but we weren't willing to share responsi-
bility for the mistakes. But in Toronto, we felt that
the Native community should have just told the
CPC(ML)-ers to back off, instead of deciding not to
support us.
Also, you've got to remember the conditions.
This was Toronto, which had the biggest number
of middle-class Native people in Canada. Some of
them liked the benefits they were receiving from
the system, or they were afraid of the system. They
wanted to prove that they were not the trouble-
makers or the radicals or the activists. An impor-
tant thing in all struggles is that it shows people
where they are at. So the people on the Caravan
felt some animosity towards the Toronto Native
community.
TThe Caravan didn't have to go to Toronto; we
could have gone by it. But we decided to go into
the city and have a rally. Because the old Canadian
Native Friendship Centre on Beverly Street was too
small, we stayed at a high school in the west end,
Harbord Collegiate. Our P.R. people had got things
kind of mixed up before we arrived and we had a
hard time finding out exactly where we were staying,
but when we finally came in we had a good meal that
my wife and some of the Rochdale people had or-
ganized for us.
44 FOLLOWING THE RED PATH
Everybody was tired from the trip, so we set-
tled down in the school auditorium. We took the
mats and our sleeping blankets and spread out to
lie down. The older brothers were tired, so some of
the young people volunteered to do security. And
that night in Toronto a racist group of thugs, the
Western Guard, sent a gang to attack us. Our non-
native, radical supporters heard about it, and got
together and formed a unit. When the Western
Guard came to attack us, our white brothers met
them on the street and drove them off. We were
still inside the school and didn't even know what
was going on. During this brief skirmish some
people in the neighbourhood called the police. A
whole bunch of police arrived but by that time
everything was over. They wanted to find out what
was going on so they came up to the school, and
our young security guards—who had sticks and
clubs to arm themselves—dropped them and ran.
They came running in to wake up Louis and myself
and others, yelling “The pigs! The pigs! They're
coming!" We woke up from a heavy sleep and got
dressed and went out, but the police just wanted to
know what was going on. We told them that every-
thing was O.K. and they left. Then we realized how
young our security was, and laughed. But it would
have been a different situation if someone had been
hurt, so after that we put some older brothers to-
gether with the younger people on security.
When we were in Toronto, Maria Campbell
joined the Caravan. She was a cousin of mine, and
the author of Half-Breed. Her dad had been a
known communist sympathizer for many years,
but later he became disillusioned with the Com-
munist Party. I was amazed to learn that quite a
few of the older people had at one time been in the
Communist Party and had a history of knowing
about socialism—our Canadian type of socialism.
Pd had the feeling that our people were anti-com-
munist, but 1 realized that this was wrong, that it
was just a misinterpretation on my part. Many of
our people were open to socialism, but a lot of anti-
communist work had been done by the churches,
Indian Affairs, and regional community workers.
In Toronto, many people in the Native community
did not distinguish between the different com-
munist parties and the different radical groups. Be-
cause they were angry at the CPC(ML) they con-
demned everyone in the left.
“Everybody was tired from the trip, so we settled down in the school auditorium. '*
On the same night that we were having our
rally, the middle-class Native people in Toronto
were having a banquet for the North American In-
dian Club. These were the people from the Native
organizations, and people who at that time con-
trolled the board of directors at the Native Cana-
dian Centre. Some of us asked if we could come to
the banquet and speak about the Caravan. It cost
$12.00 a person and we couldn't afford that, so we
asked if they would let us come without paying the
$12.00. They said no, that we would have to pay.
So we raised some money from our people to go
there.
There were six of us who went over, while we
were having our rally, and we had to pay. We
didn't argue with the guy, so we were allowed in
and we were given our own table. There were quite
a few people there. They were all very well-to-do:
working people, middle-class people, and some
society people who supported Native issues. Some
people were friendly towards us—Gary George and
a few others—but some people were indifferent
and some were hostile.
I forget who the guest speaker was; people
almost fell asleep while he was talking. Johnny
Yesno, who is very well-known in the Native com-
munity, was the emcee. He was very open and wan-
ted to help, but when we asked if someone from
the Caravan could speak, they opposed it. They
told Johnny that we couldn't speak because then
they'd have to allow anyone to speak. When John-
ny introduced people he introduced some of us,
and announced who we were. He asked people to
pass around the hat for us and I think we got back
what we paid to get in, and a little bit more. Then
we left to get back to our rally.
People were quite pleased when we left. Some
people supported us, but the majority were kind of
embarrassed; they just saw us as a bunch of radi-
cals and troublemakers. Most of them were quite
drunk and a few even fell out of their chairs. We
werc quite disgusted at the whole thing. And it was
TROUBLE IN TORONTO 45
something for us to see a combination of tuxedos
with chokers, and evening gowns with Native hair
ties. The six of us were dressed kind of militant; we
had headbands on, and tunics. | think that most of
those people felt really uncomfortable that we were
there. And we felt good that we made them un-
comfortable.
Louis was upset that we had gone there and a
lot of people felt it was a waste of time, but we felt
it was important that we go talk to these people and
let them know what we were doing. We felt that we
should have some dialogue with them, not just
write them off. And we felt it was important they
didn't write us off. We went there to raise money,
to awaken their conscience, and to make them feel
uncomfortable, which we did—successful on all
points.
Torn poster advertising the Toronto rally, September 28, 1974
On September 27th, the Native People's Caravan, а cuval-
vade of over 250 people in cars and buses, will be arriving
in Toronto. The Caravan began in Vancouver on Sept
ber Idth, travelling across the country to explain the
problems and anger of the native people and build the
Caravan for a demonstration on Parliament Hill in Ottawa
оп Monday. September 30th.
Llected leaders of the Caravan will be speaking at a
public meeting this Saturday. September 28th at 5.00 p.m.
at Herhord Collegiate Institute, about why they have been
forced tu use puns to defend their human and hereditary
ngh
‘Over the past two months, they have хыр
taken te
Inghways. rums
British Colum
longer tolerate rotten living conditions which
their average Ме expectancy is only 35 y
tem families |, 95 per ке
ployed in Kenora and other areas: the schoul dropout rate
i uver 75 per vent in
The Caravan i gong to Ottawa September 30th to
TORONTO RALLY.
4 land
и Mem in Kenora, Ontario and blocked the
ме through ther tans w Cache Creek
оріс will no
hat
ly one in
с running water vem:
h schools
DEMONSTRATION
OTTAWA — Parliament Hill
Authorized by
nlormation on the rallyor trans
п for the Caravan, please call the Indian Centre
eon
SUPPORT THE NATIVE PEOPLES’ FIGHT!
INDIANS STAND UP FOR RIGHTS > NATIVE PEOPLE'S CARAVAN HEADING FOR TORONTO
the CENTRAL STEERING COMMITTEE
make these demands at the opening of Parliament
That treaty rights and aboriginal rights of native people}
be recognized and respected.
An end to the Act
А full investigation of the Department of Indian
Affain bs Native People for the purpose of dissolving}
D
A just settlement of Indian land claims.
Decent housing for native peoples.
1 сопопік development of the reserves,
Adequate health care and education Гог native peoples
Speakers at the Kally will be members of the Central
с Committee of the Native People’s in the Caravan
Society and leaders of ihel
Movement
COME TO THE PUBLIC MEETING SATURDAY.
JOIN THE CARAVAN TO OTTAWA.
SUPPORT THE NATIVE PEOPLES“ Понт FOK)
DECENT LIVING CONDITIONS AN) TO REGAIN
THEIR LAND AND HEREDITARY КК НТБ.
Harbord Collegiate, 286 Harbord osios west ос шь
September 28, 1974, 8:00 p.m.
September 30 1:00p
the NATIV= PEOPLES,
эг to contribute food and
to, 210 Beverley St
46 FOLLOWING THE RED PATH
Then we went back to our meeting, which was
one of the best rallies we had. It was at Harbord
Collegiate, and the place was packed—I think there
were about 700 people there. Maria Campbell
spoke, and got a standing ovation. David Camp-
bell, a Native folksinger from Guyana, came and
sang. He joined the Caravan, and stayed with us
till Ottawa.
It was a very militant rally. Some of the Native
people who came said afterwards that it was a turn-
ing point for them. When they heard people speak
at that rally they started getting involved, and some
of the Toronto people who were there have now
become strong supporters of the movement. So it
was a very political, very important mecting.
Again, a real feeling of Nativeness emerged, and
people felt quite proud. There was no real anti-
white feeling. It was a very good, positive meeting.
The non-native support in Toronto was one of
the best; people really came out. But from the
point of view of Native support, the downer for us
was Toronto. At that time I was very militant, and
] felt that these people in Toronto were cowards. I
felt that they were terrified of the government.
They had every reason to be, because the govern-
ment has its tanks and its army and the RCMP. We
on the Caravan recognized that, but we were pre-
pared to fight for Native nationhood. That's why
we were on the Caravan, because we were prepared
to struggle, to stand up and be part of a movement.
Some of the local Native leaders started sup-
porting us, but we felt that they should have taken
а stronger stand. I think that there was poor leader-
ship, and that many people just went along with it.
But people from Toronto responded much more
positively to the Caravan after what happened on
Parliament Hill. They held a demonstration in
Queen's Park, and were one of the first to demand
an inquiry into the RCMP riot.
I talked to some of the Toronto people later,
and they said they felt they had made a mistake,
that they should have supported us. We're all en-
titled to make mistakes if we learn from them. But
at the time Toronto was the most disappointing
spot, because it had so much potential. Old
grudges have been held for quite a while, and the
grudges from Kenora and the Caravan just more or
less went away in 1977.
People from the Toronto community had a
very good opportunity to support the Caravan, but
because of the conditioning of their own lives they
felt that we weren't capable of controlling it. They
felt that anyone could take us over. And so they
underestimated us, and overestimated the non-
natives. They had a lack of confidence in their own
people. Us, it just made us all the more deter-
mined.
It is wonderful to see all of you again. | want to tell
you about my purpose in joining the Caravan in
Edmonton, and my feelings about the whole
thing.
lam a mother and a grandmother and a Native
woman. For the last four years | have been опа
real downer, because | thought | would never
again see the work | watched my father and other
Native people do during the 1940s. It seemed that
all we were ever going to accomplish was
organizing more bureaucratic offices. Then
something happened about a year
ago— Wounded Knee—and things started
happening all over the country ....
I went to a residential school and a white public
school, and | know that no history ever written
about Native people was made by my kind. Asa
writer, the most important role | can play in the
movement is to tell our people about our history.
Our leaders did not give up; our leaders in the
early 1900s were condemned by their own
communities and government officials, but they
did not give up.
For 500 years they have tried to kill us, but they
have never destroyed the spirit in each of us to
fight. During some of my research, | came across
a priest's diary from the 1500s, which said, "The
only way to destroy these people is to destroy
their unity, to break the mother." They almost did
that, but Native women have always fought
against genocide. Sisters are very important in
the movement, and the Caravan recognizes that.
There are all sorts of movements happening in
Canada—with women, with poor people— but
today Native people are leading the struggle. We
have no reason to be afraid of violence, because
we live with it. Go back to the communities, and
together we will fight our common enemy.
Part of a speech by Maria Campbell,
September 28, 1974, Toronto
TROUBLE IN TORONTO 47
е rs "чш
Dennis Hanuse (left) and Wandering River (right) in Ottawa, September 29, 1974 THE CANADIAN PRESS
48 FOLLOWING THE RED PATH
X OnToOttawa
On the 29th some of us drove up to Montréal from
Toronto to a rally organized by the CPC(ML). By
this time some of the people from the Central
Committee were displeased with the CPC(ML), and
right away there were problems. Hardial Bains was
supposed to chair the meeting, and Louis didn't
want him to. The CPC(ML) had wanted Louis to
emerge as the leader of the Caravan, but when he
started acting like a leader and making decisions on
his own, they got upset. He couldn't be controlled,
as they hoped he could be.
I was caught right in the middle, because | was
a supporter of the CPC(ML), and of course I was
with Louis. I had been attracted to the CPC(ML) be-
cause it was the only party in Canada to follow the
teachings of Mao Tse Tung, who had done so
much for the Chinese people, and at that time I felt
their organization could be used to advance the in-
terests of Native people in this country. After the
Caravan, when the differences between us became
clear and I went my way, the CPC(ML) told me that
I was “а snake in the pocket of the people’ and
would wind up in *'the garbage can of history.”
But only time and struggle will show who ends up
in the garbage can of history.
The rally in Montréal was fairly good and
raised quite a bit of money, though it could have
been better. It didn't have the same feeling of unity
as the other rallies. Louis chaired the meeting and
Hardial didn't even speak, so the CPC(ML) was mad
about that. They got the idea that we just wanted
to take their money and that was it. And a lot of
people on the Caravan wanted it that way. After
the meeting Louis came back to Toronto to rejoin
the Caravan and the rest of us drove to Ottawa to
check out the arrangements for our stay there.
It was a constant worry whether the Caravan
would get to Ottawa, but once we arrived in Toron-
to we knew that we would make it. People spent
two days in Toronto before going up to Ottawa.
Anxiety was getting quite high. People were star-
ting to feel good, but they didn't know what was
going to happen. It was tiring too, because we'd
been on the road for two weeks, going day and
night, sleeping on hard floors, and not eating for
long periods of time. Sometimes we just ate sand-
wiches on the bus, or got one meal to last us all
day. People were also starting to get their clothes
together in Toronto. That was important, to have a
good appearance.
We had people going ahead to Ottawa to find
a place for us to stay and they found us an old em-
pty building that was just perfect for us, on an is-
land in the Ottawa River. The Caravan arrived in
Ottawa on the evening of the 29th of September,
and got in there late. I think the police were expec-
ting us to occupy some government offices, so
when we moved in early and took over that build-
ing we caught everyone off guard.
A few people came to the building to join us,
and we had a security set-up that people had to go
through. We felt that some of the people from the
Native organizations didn't really come in support.
They didn't participate; they just stayed on the
fringe and watched. And we had some Christians
coming to see what was happening.
By the time we got to Ottawa, we were really
exhausted. Then, next morning, we had to get
ready for the Hill.
ON TOOTTAWA 49
+$ MANIFESTO &
To the people of Canada and
the Government of Canada
From the Native Peoples' Caravan
53 DECLARATION G- 96640044654.
We the Native Peoples have banded together to come to Ottawa seeking
justice.
We the Native Peoples are here to talk about justice. We are here to talk
about equality and human rights. We are here to talk about the right of all
people to live as free people.
For many years we have received promises instead of human rights.
Promises instead of justice. We are here to say the people cannot live on
promises.
Our people lived in freedom and harmony with our mother earth
thousands of years before the coming of the Europeans and their values. Our
people had strong families, our people had education, our people had control
of their lives, our people had the religion of giving and respect for all of our
mother earth's creations.
Today our people exist in the midst of the Canadian extension of
European competitive values. Today our people have alcoholism. Today our
people have no education. Today our people have no work. Today our
people have no housing. Today our people have no respect.
We are here to talk about violence.
We are against violence. The violence of racism, poverty, economic
dependence alcoholism, land theft and educational warfare. This is the
violence that has hurt our people. We say it is time for the democracy of
Canada to end its political and social violence against our people.
We say it is time for the Canadian political system to be reasonable and listen
to the voice of our community.
We say you have been unreasonable. The proof is evident in the conditions
our people exist in. Since the politicians have taken control of our lives the
destruction of our communities has increased.
We are here to speak of solutions.
We do not want promises and rhetoric.
We want humane action.
We are here to talk about constructive action.
This time we are still willing to talk but we will not sit idly to the side while
the destruction of our people is completed.
We only seek to live as free people. It is the way of the land and its
children.
The will of the people to be free is supreme.
The right of the people to be free is divine.
The demands of the Native
Peoples' Caravan
The hereditary and treaty rights of all Native People's in Canada,
including Indian, Metis, Non-status and Inuit, must be recognized and
respected in the constitution of Canada.
It is the continuing violation of our hereditary rights that has resulted
in the destruction of the self-reliance of the Native peoples. We are no
longer content to be the most impoverished peoples of Canada.
ve
We demand the repeal of the present Indian Act and the creation by
Native People of new legislation recognizing our right to self-
determination and sovereignty over our lands.
++
The Department of Indian Affairs operates to serve business and
government interests — not the interests of the Indian people.
We demand a complete investigation of the Department of Indian
Affairs by Native People and the transfer of its power and resources to
Native communities. Indian Affairs must belong to the Indian people.
Indian Affairs must be separated from the Department of Northern
Development.
bed
We demand annual payments in perpetuity from all levels of
government.
Canadian wealth is derived from the land and the natural resources of
the land. The time lias come for Canadian governments to pay their
debts to Native peoples.
++
We demand ап end to the destruction of our Native economies.
$
We demand immediate payment of $2.5 billion from money not
presently allocated to Indian Affairs which will be used by local Native
communities to meet their needs for the development of self-sufficient
economies.
It is racial discrimination and genocide that the federal government
pays $750 million to the province of Prince Edward Island (with its
population of less than 1/3 of the native population) for economic
development but has refused to provide equivalent money for the
Native peoples, the most impoverished peoples of-Canada.
v
10
We demand that the standard of housing in Native communities be
immediately raised to the Canadian average.
$800 million of money not presently allocated to Indian Affairs must
be made available to local Native communities for housing needs this
year.
+e
We demand health care facilities and services which are adequate to
raise the life expectancy of Native people to the Canadian average
within five years.
If underdeveloped countries such as China and Cuba are capable of
raising their standards of health care dramatically over short periods of
time, it is genocidal that a rich country like Canada continues to ignore
the desperate health needs of the Native people.
ФФ
We demand an end to Federal cutbacks on Native education and an
expansion of community controlled Native education.
The education system must be made to serve Native people rather than
Native peoples being made to serve an educational system designed to
destroy native cultures.
oe
Violence and oppression will only be ended when both the hereditary
and human rights of the Native peoples are truly upheld.
We demand that $500 million be made available of money not
presently allocated to Indian Affairs to Native communities for legal
defence.
Native people must no longer fill the prisons and mental wards of
Canada. RACIST JUSTICE MUST END.
HÀ.
Design, layout and printing by volunteer labour
Setting out from the Native People's Embassy for Parliament Hill
54 FOLLOWING THE RED PATH
XI TheRCMP Riot
I remember getting up on the morning of the 30th,
after having a good rest. A cold wind was coming
but our spirits were high, and people were all start-
ing to prepare. We were living fairly close to one
another, so we noticed what everyone else was
doing. One sister called Stretch had a big black hat
and was putting on her make-up and lipstick. Quite
a few of the women thought this was amusing, be-
cause they didn't use make-up of any kind; they
frowned upon it. This sister was a street person and
she was getting all dolled up, just like she was going
to a dance. It was kind of a carnival atmosphere.
Everyone felt excited, and quite proud too, be-
cause we had accomplished what we set out to do.
It was September 30th, we were going to be up on
the Hill, and we felt good about ourselves. A lot of
people—even the people in the Native organiza-
tions—didn't think we'd make it. And we had
made it.
By this time I had my family with me; they
joined from Toronto. My wife, Pauline, was there,
and all my kids: Vince, who was 16 at the time;
Deanna, who was 11; Luana, who was 9; Clayton
(“Нагрег”), who was 6; Teddy, who was 4; and
Leslie, who was just over a year old.
We had a meeting before we went, and talked
about a few things. We had decided to get up early
and get up on the Hill. In some ways that was an
advantage and in some ways a disadvantage, be-
cause we didn't have enough time to prepare
people for the actual demonstration. We never
really planned how long we were going to be up
there; we felt that a Member of Parliament would
come out to meet us.
We had not prepared for violence at all. We
talked about violence, but we didn't really believe
it would happen. This was Ottawa, and this was
Parliament, which they say is the place for us to
come and bring our grievances. And that's the way
we went.
The sisters had organized themselves to look
after the children and keep them together, and we
had organized a type of security around our
people. The Quakers didn't come with us. They
usually don't get into demonstrations because of
their non-violent role, so they stayed behind and
we respected that.
Just before we left, Louis asked me to check
and see that everybody was out of the building who
was going. Some of the young brothers had been
digging around and found a box of lead spikes.
These young people—14 and 15 years old—started
picking the spikes up and arming themselves with
them, but Peter Linklater and myself said **We're
going up there by ourselves. We have our hands to
defend ourselves; we don't need any weapons.”
We got most of the brothers to put the spikes back,
but I think a couple of them may have slipped them
into their boots. They were nervous and scared,
and I think they felt secure with these things on
them.
We left some people behind to secure the
building so that it wouldn't be taken away from us,
because we were constantly watched by the RCMP
and the OPP and the city police. We left some
young and some older people together—we had
learned our lesson from Toronto.
THE RCMP RIOT 55
“We had a little over a mile to march, and as we marched quite a few people joined our ranks.”
That morning, when we were getting ready to
go, it was cold. Some church people had brought
down a whole bunch of old clothes the night
before, and a lot of brothers put on these old fur
coats that had a 1920s and 1930s look. | remember
my son Vince putting on one of them. It was real
colourful seeing our people wearing these baggy
20s and 30s clothes mixed with headbands, caps,
and hats with feathers.
Everyone met on the second floor as we were
going out. We were on what they call Victoria Is-
land, on the bridge between Hull and Ottawa, and
we crossed over from the Québec side. We had
some banners, and the drum from the Ojibway
Warrior Society went on ahead. The drum is part
of our culture and our heritage, and it always went
with us.
56 FOLLOWING THE RED PATH
We had a little over a mile to march, and as we
marched quite a few people—Native and non-
native—joined our ranks. There were a lot of T.V.
cameras. When we got to the Hill we were glad to
see so many people waiting for us. I think it gave us
a false feeling of security. We felt that these people
were right with us, but most of them were only ob-
servers; they just came to see what was going on.
Earlier that day the Montagnais people from
Québec had come down ahead of us and built a
monument for James Bay. They built it out of
rocks, and as they put the rocks on the monument
the RCMP took them away. They were there, and
some of the Native students from Trent University,
and some non-natives. So a tremendous number of
people joined us.
“When we got to the bottom of the steps we were surprised to be faced with barricades. We had expected to be able to
march up to the front door of the Parliament Buildings. '*
Then the CPC(ML) arrived in large numbers
from the other direction. They were slightly behind
us, with their bright red banners. We didn't have
many banners ourselves; we had a few flags, and
we had the drum. I think our mistake was that we
did not instruct the support groups just to be there,
without their banners. But we were inexperienced
and the demonstration was open to everyone,
Native and non-native.
When we got to the bottom of the steps we
were surprised to be faced with barricades. We had
expected to be able to march up to the front door
of the Parliament Buildings at the top of Parlia-
ment Hill. Some individuals decided that they wan-
ted to go right through and get into the Parliament
Buildings, and a few of our people were arrested. It
was quite confusing, because we had agreed that
there would be no violence.
I was in front, and as the barricades were
pushed aside there was quite a scuffle. When I saw
one of the RCMP flip my son Vince, I grabbed him
and then my son jumped up and helped me. My
son and I have had different opinions on different
things, but there we were father and son struggling
together. I think that incident was really important
because we knew, kind of by instinct, who the
enemy was and what we had to do. He was thrown
on the ground and I got knocked down, but the
main thing is that we both got up and fought side
by side.
Some of the people who saw us fighting came
and helped us, and we were able to get control. The
RCMP was pushed aside and we managed to get to
the top of the steps before the RCMP re-established
the barricades. That all happened at 2:00 o'clock.
Then things settled down and the drumming
started.
THE RCMP RIOT 57
“We hadn't asked ourselves, ‘What if they don't listen to us?" We thought for sure someone would come out.”
I remember being all caught up in it. 1 saw my
family behind me, and we thought everything was
going to be O.K. We never really planned how long
we would be there. We just said we would make
our demands, and we expected a Member оГ
Parliament to come out and meet us. The sun came
out a couple of times but it was a cold, fall day. We
hadn't asked ourselves **What if they don't listen
to us?” We thought for sure someone would come
out. It was going to be a long afternoon.
There were a lot of news reporters on the Hill
that day, but one of the few people who described
what really happened was Gary George, a Native
reporter. This is what he wrote:
58 FOLLOWING THE RED PATH
NATIVES DEMONSTRATE
by Gary George
The myth of a non-violent Canadian society was
smashed to pieces in front of Canada's Peace
Tower on Parliament Hill on September 30th.
The clash was between club-swinging,
helmet-wearing, riot-trained RCMP and placard-
carrying Native men, women, children and non-
native supporters, all calling for positive action to
end the oppression of Native people in Canada.
This incident marked the 30th opening of the
Canadian Parliament, the official beginning of the
Trudeau government's rule with a majority of
seats in the House of Commons. The violence
started when government officials refused to
recognize the presence of the demonstrators. The
pomp and ceremony of Parliament's opening
continued with few changes in tradition.
When the estimated 200 demonstrators
reached the stairs on Parliament Hill leading to
the Centre Bloc they were stopped by RCMP and
wooden barricades. As more people marched up
the stairs, the front line of Native people was
forced against the barricades.
This clash lasted for about twenty minutes
before both sides stopped physical conflict.
When it finally quieted down the police moved
back about a foot and stood four men deep, arms
locked, facing the demonstrators. Directly behind
them were the press and white spectators.
The Native drummers started beating out the
American Indian Movement's rally song. Men,
women and children joined voices in the song,
filling the air with the chant. The peace bells
started to chime as a military band came around
from the west end of the Parliament Buildings
playing a traditional march and leading the
military honour quard with rifles and bayonets
This increased the chanting and drumming until
the air was filled with a combination of bugles,
french horns, trombones and Indian chanting. The
honour guard was then ordered to stand at
attention as the Chief Justice of Canada. Bora
Laskin, surfaced from his plush, chauffeur-driven
limousine to review the guards from a little red
pedestal. This move on the part of the Chief
Justice to use a limousine and not the traditional
open carriage indicated that the RCMP expected
violence even when it was stated by the Caravan
spokesmen the night before that the
demonstration was to be peaceful.
After his official review, the Chief Justice and
Mrs. Laskin then turned and entered the big brass
door of the House of Commons, escorted by two
RCMP dressed in the traditional red coats.
THE RCMP RIOT 59
The honour guard was then ordered to face
the demonstrators and stand at alert. There was a
noticeable uneasiness as one heard the clanging
of metal against the pavement and watched the
guards make mistakes during formation of ranks.
They stood motionless, with such little facial
expression that they seemed like robots.
Across the yard, on the steps of the House of
Commons, dignitaries moved in and out of the
building. Spectators stood there in safety
watching the scene, while plain-clothes RCMP
took pictures of the crowd. Occasionally men
dressed in business suits and women in long
gowns and mink stoles came out of the building
to view the scene. Many laughed and talked with
the RCMP posted on the steps of the House of
Commons.
There was an uneasy silence from the
demonstrators and then speeches were made
calling for a meeting with Prime Minister Trudeau.
They set a deadline of 4:00 o'clock for the meeting
with the Prime Minister or his representative. The
deadline passed with no sign of concern from the.
government. This increased the visible frustration
and tension on many of the demonstrators' faces
as the government continued to ignore their
presence.
When the Chief Justice again appeared on
the steps of Parliament there was some hope that
he would speak with the group. This was soon
dashed to the ground as he ignored the demon-
strators and stood at attention as the band played
"God Save the Queen." This non-recognition
Started a new round of chanting, drum beating,
shouting and booing; the Canadian national
anthem was drowned out and the band stopped
playing. Chief Justice Laskin still ignored the
demonstrators and drove off in a limousine.
Wanting to see what was happening, the
people below the Centre Bloc courtyard started to
move up the steps. This action sent the front line
against the barricades and the police. This.
caused people to start falling and chaos took over
as the police used the poles to hold back the
crowd.
News cameras snapped as the police and
Native people fought; Status, Non-Status Indian
and Métis people joined against the police. Some
of the white supporters were thrown into the
action.
Everyone was kicking, punching, clubbing
and swearing as the police were forced to give
way and break formation. When this happened the
honour guard closed their ranks and stood
waiting. For a few minutes it seemed that the
demonstrators might be forced to fight men with
rifles and bayonets.
60 FOLLOWING THE RED PATH
The tension and frustration grew and then
subsided. The police again closed ranks and the
demonstrators calmed down. The fight seemed to
have ended with no side gaining any important
ground.
Native people, beaten and bloody, picked
themselves up from the ground and brushed off
the dirt. A few policemen lost their caps and some
were injured. The press was snapping pictures
and recording with taped commentary.
About thirty minutes passed when, to the
Shock of everyone in the crowd, a rush of
helmeted, club-swinging, riot-trained RCMP.
moved in on the unarmed crowd of demonstrators
and spectators.
Chaos resumed with the people being
pushed to the ground, clubbed and kicked by the
riot police. Women and men grabbed for anything
they could use as weapons of defence. Ata
disadvantage, the Native demonstrators were
forced down the steps to the lower lawn of
Parliament Hill. The police then told the crowd to
disperse and continued down the steps. Someone
set an evergreen tree on fire and smoke filtered
past the Peace Tower.
The poorly armed and unarmed
demonstrators then turned to the street to escape
the armed riot police. Manned by young girls, the
drum continued beating, leading the people to the
main gates. As the crowd neared the street they
noticed the main gate had been closed by the
police. Ottawa’s city police were a visible force
standing on the other side of the black iron fence.
A sense of helplessness became apparent as
people turned around and saw the riot police
swiftly advancing. Boxed in, the adults grabbed
the children and wounded to help them escape
the pending disaster. Tension grew but as the
crowd moved near the fence they noticed the
small side gates had been left open. A feeling of
relief came over the demonstrators as they moved
into the street.
Ottawa's rush hour traffic was diverted south
by the police while the street filled, as Native
people and their supporters moved off federal
property.
Sirens blared and fire trucks moved up
Parliament Hill to put out the tree fire. The riot
police stopped at the gates and the
demonstrators regrouped around the drum. The
AIM rally song then echoed over the scene as the
group moved west on Wellington Street to the
Union Carbide building.
The Forgotten People, October 1974.
“The tension and frustration grew and then subsided. The police again closed ranks and the demonstrators calmed down. '"
Diary, Parliament Hill, September 30, 1974
We have given them 25 minutes to get Judd
Buchanan to come out and see us or else.
They have taken Gordon Stonechild and one
other brother into custody. When we came up the
steps, Kelly and Gordon, who were carrying the
upside down flag, were forced back and attacked
first. That's when Gordon was taken and Kelly
knocked down and stepped on and treated very
rough. They used force to keep us back but our
brothers are brave and fought back. The reason
we stopped was because we were told to by our
people....
We have asked for our brothers back several
times but have got no response. They are very
silent.
The drums are going again. This makes me
feel good and adds strength to my spirit. | am not
afraid. | don't want to die but | have come fora
reason, for my people, all of my brothers and
sisters .... There аге 15 minutes left. There are
screams about Trudeau, that asshole, throughout
the crowd. We want to talk to Trudeau but he
doesn't come out. | wonder why. They said they
couldn't speak to us because we were violent and
we carried arms but we have no arms now and still
they don't talk. Instead they have arms. They have
the Army here and the RCMP. They have guns with
knives on the end of them. Also when the Army
came they had a band bring them on but our
drums drowned them out. They also tried to drown
us out by ringing those stupid bells but they
couldn't and stopped.
There was a sound of glass breaking but I
don't know who or what it is. There are a lot of
brothers here from all over. There are also big
guns here like cannons.
The only things we have to defend ourselves
with are a few clubs. But we will not back down.
Member, Native People's Caravan
THE RCMP RIOT 61
тх OW "у
ге, Жен
THE CANADIAN PRESS
62 FOLLOWING THE RED PATH
азни из» 204
“ет REE
THE CANADIAN PRESS
THE RCMP RIOT 63
“А lot of people couldn't believe what was happening, when the riot squad attacked us. Some people were knocked
off the steps and off the ledge—a fifteen-foot drop." THE CANADIAN PRESS
64 FOLLOWING THE RED PATH
A lot of people couldn't believe what was
happening, when the riot squad attacked us. Some
people were knocked off the steps and off the
ledge—a fifteen-foot drop. I was hit on the head
with a riot club and received a concussion in the
first part of the fight, and Cindy Anderson's skull
was cracked when she was thrown from a paddy
wagon. The sister who had been getting all dressed
up—her hat was twisted around, her ribbon was
knocked off, and her make-up was smeared all
over her face. It didn't look like she had been at a
dance.
It was a really terrifying experience for the
children. Pauline and I were up front, and some of
the non-natives in the back were looking after our
kids. One of my boys was being carried up on a
man's shoulders, and when the riot squad attacked
he got so scared he wet himself. But another of my
sons, the four-year-old, was quite unconcerned. He
was walking around on the grass with a box of
chips while the riot squad was coming towards
him. They were maybe twenty yards away, or even
closer. There were bodies dropping and clubs
going, but he was more interested in eating his
chips than anything else. We had to actually scoop
him up and run. We felt that maybe he had seen so
much violence on T.V. that he thought this was
just like a T. V. programme. He wasn't scared, but
he was the only one who wasn’t.
Then one of my girls, Luana, had gotten lost,
and of course we were looking for her; we were
worried. When the riot squad attacked she got
back to the end, down near the gate. A white
woman who was walking by saw what was going
on, and was kind enough to take Luana and talk to
her, and settle her down. She told her to stay with
her by the main gate, knowing that we would be
looking for her. So she kept her there, and when
we came through that way, we found her.
I believe that the whole thing was pre-planned,
that the Cabinet knew the riot squad was going to
be used on us. We had put them in an embarrassing
position. Here it was, the opening of Parliament,
and the world was watching. And when you look at
the main thrust of that Caravan—people who were
in Cache Creek, people who were in Kenora—l
believe they felt, “We've got most of the Native
radicals right here.”
I feel that the riot squad was used on us to ac-
complish a number of things. One was to show
Native people across the country that if they sup-
ported us or got involved in the Native liberation
movement, this is what they would get. The
government was licking its wounds from Kenora
and Cache Creek, because those were victories for
the movement. And here we were, the same bunch
of people with more support than ever before. I be-
lieve they were trying to intimidate us, to break our
spirit, to teach us a lesson, and to drive off non-
native support. It was also meant to show people
across the country and on the reserves, “This is a
taste of what you'll get if you use these confronta-
tion tactics." Because that's what it was, a con-
frontation.
We had gone to Ottawa to discuss our
grievances, to talk face-to-face with the govern-
ment about issues like housing and education and
self-determination. But when we got there we were
met with violence. The riot squad deliberately at-
tacked us, and whenever I talk to people about that
day I always point out that it wasn't Native people
who rioted—it was the RCMP.
THE RCMP RIOT 65
“When we were forced off the Hill the drum kept us together, going back to the building we had occupied. ”
66 FOLLOWING THE RED PATH
XII Back From The Hill
When we were forced off the Hill the drum kept us
together, going back to the building we had oc-
cupied. That drum was like the heartbeat of our
people, and there was a feeling, coming off the
Hill, that a Nation was starting to come together.
Everyone felt really strong towards each other.
It didn't look like a victory but in a way it was,
because the riot squad exposed the role of the
RCMP towards Native people once and for all, right
in front of thousands of people across Canada. A
lot of people couldn't believe their eyes, but Native
people, who live under daily attacks from the
RCMP, felt they were simply showing their true
colours. The Queen's Cowboys, as we call them,
were laying their thing down to us like they always
do, here on the national steps of Ottawa.
Up until then we didn't have real strong sup-
port from some of our people across the country.
But when Native people on the reserves saw the
RCMP riot on television, all that changed. And a lot
of non-native people who had been kind of in-
different became strong supporters of the Caravan.
All over the country, people wrote letters to the
editors of their newspapers—some for us, some
against us, but most of them protesting about what
had happened. I think the way the RCMP openly at-
tacked us made a lot of people who didn't care one
way or the other take a stand. They didn't like the
brutality that was used against unarmed people. So
it was a victory, because it won over a lot of
people.
Wally Firth, a Native Member of Parliament,
said later that he had been on his way out of the
Parliament Buildings to see us but it was already
too late; the riot squad had attacked us. Hc said hc
cried when he saw what was going on, but at times
tears aren't enough. And Flora MacDonald, who
was at that time the Conservative critic for Indian
Affairs— where was she? She's supposed to be such
a defender of Native people. I'm convinced that if
any of them, if just one of these so-called defenders
of Native people had come out to talk to us, that
riot could have been avoided. The Members of
Parliament could have prevented it, but because of
their own interests, they didn't. Well, they say
birds of a feather flock together.
I had felt disillusioned when I was involved in
Native organizations, but I was all the more dis-
illusioned on that day, when I saw what contempt
the government and the police had for Native
people. They didn't quite see us as human beings.
And on the day after the riot they were con-
gratulating each other on how well they had han-
dled the situation. They would never have used the
riot squad on white people. But the Native
People's Caravan gave them a chance to test the
riot squad—which they never used before or since
—on real people.
I was really disillusioned with the churches
too. The role of the church is still to work hand in
hand with the government. Christians give a good
rap about how they support Native people, but
what they should talk about is how they lead
Native people, because that’s what they’ve always
tried to do. We gave them an opportunity to sup-
port, but their understanding of support is to give
blankets and a few stale sandwiches and a few bus
tickets. We’re very suspicious of people who give
us blankets, ever since Sitting Bull’s people got
smallpox from the blankets that were given to
them. So we have a great distrust for Christian
people, even though a lot of our own people are
Christians.
BACK FROM THE HILL 67
68
Indian people came in peace
she protests
To the editor of The Star:
Your coverage of the demonstra-
tian on Parliament Н! (7300 Moun:
ties, troops quell Indians’ protest,
Oct. 1) contained a serious distor
tion due to the omission of some
facts
Why. for instance. was И not men:
tioned that the Indian peupie came
in peace, bringing with them a bona-
fide declaration of their wish to ne-
койме without violence?
Perhaps tiis was overlooked be
cause the Indians otherwise might
have appeared tà be moze genune,
less excitin tant mob.
After all, И Joe Citizen. was ale
Хокей to believe that the caravan
had serious concerns and sensible
solutions, he night even begin to
question (Heaven forbid") the demo-
cratic system which has so miser,
ably failed to respond to the voice of
these people
EVELYN MENARY
'eterboroogh
‘A field day for
South African press’
То the editor of The Star:
Native people marching on Parlia-
ment and being clubbed by the state
police and army. Petty criminals
beaten in jail for pure sadi:
What a field day the South African.
press could be having right now if it
too were а bleed.ng-heart press fret-
ti ıt problems around the
world and ignoring problems on is
own doorstep.
GEORGE HARRY
Scarborough
FOLLOWING THE RED PATH
does not permit tne purchase of
gh food let alone lumber for
изе building.
And just at this opportune junc
ture our government announces that
с will increase its official aia
loping countries to 3733 mi
Поп next year--up 23 per сеш.
Shall we attempt. to rehabilitate
the rest of the overpopulated world
ог shall we come to the rescue of
‘our own first citizens who now сес
'ammed for oblivion’
А massive re-housi
Canadian Indien familie
unreasonable request after tw
turies of frustration and ne
WARREN Lf
“Time for action
to aid Indians
To the editor of The Star:
We have seen some “violence” re-
cently on Parliament Hill from а
number of In арз and sup
porters from across Canada.
The manner in which the mar
was made has seen much critici
from both white and native pee
alike. 1 would like to suggest И
ме talk too much, and then
though the verbalization of
many complaints has been so
kind of active participation, we
get that it even happened.
Whether we agree with their аре
proach or not is not the issue here
What are we going to do about it?
1 think its time we began to listen
and. more importantly, act with re-
gard to the problems faced by our
nat ve people
ROSEMARY PETERSON
‘Thunder Bay
‘Oppressive action
by government’
To the editor of The Star:
If a full investigation of the Ind-
ians' demonstration on Parliament
Hill is to be held — as The Star
editorial recommends
produces desperate action,
then let's have public, open hear-
ngs so that the Canadian govern-
ment’s conspicuous lack or respons:
le action and Ше RCMP riot
ad's oppressive үзе of force will
me ош nstead of covered up or
rationalized away
The government's oppressive aç-
tion on the people—both Indians and
ople — at the demonstration
5 simply the most resent example
aly consistent and traditional poll-
у of massive opprsssiun against the
Indian рет le of Canada — our own
native ciens and original found-
^n inhumanly oppressed people's
Violence as an act of protest and
тезмапсе is always justified, since
t is a struggle for human freedom,
human при, human justice—not
only for Indian people but for all op-
pressed people everywhere.
DON WEITZ
Toronto
“Media blackout on
Indian caravan’
To the edilar of The Str:
Perhaps indian Affairs Minister
dd Buchanan. Is correct in saying
that, the Одама demonstrador
worked Чо the disadvantage of In
Gans across the county." ("Vis
agitators roused Indians Buchanan
Oe" et 2) ни it did aecompiah
О ange publicity for he might
ol many of Canada’s native prone
During. Me time Ue caravan
moved towards Оака there was al-
most a blackout, as far as the news
medo were concerned, on 103
Py could some of the sad facts
nol nave been revealed then, before
things come to a head in Ottawa?
CLAUDINE GOLLEN.
салына
I thought that the Christians should have been
up there on the Hill, that they should have prac-
ticed a little of their Christianity. But most of them
were ready to see Communists behind every pillar in
Ottawa. The Quakers did oppose the government,
and some of the Christian women who came out to
make a stand for Native people have suffered for
it. They've been denounced or pushed back. It’s
one thing for people to talk about things, and it's
another for people to take action.
After the riot, the Canadian Federation of Civil
Liberties and Human Rights Associations did lot of
work and presented a brief to Warren Allmand, who
was Solicitor-General at that time (before he became
Minister of Indian Affairs). This brief contained
peoples’ personal accounts of what happened on the
Hill.
Any time something like the RCMP riot hap-
pens, it’s so easy for the government to say ‘‘Let’s
have an inquiry.” From that day until right now,
we've asked to have an inquiry into the riot, but the
government always shrewdly gets around it. The
government could have an inquiry tomorrow, but
they realize that if they did they would be exposed.
Even if they could get some people to lie, and I
guess they could, they couldn't cover up all the
facts. It would be proven that the RCMP, under or-
ders, caused the riot and attacked our people.
It was an important day, the 30th of Septem-
ber, 1974, because it caused some people who had
not been very involved in the movement:to become
dedicated to the struggle. From that day forth,
many people gave a total commitment to seeing the
end of tyranny and the oppression of Native
people.
It was important, too, for our children to be
there. Our children used to ask us, **Why do we go
to demonstrations?" We always take our children
with us to demonstrations, because they're a part
of the struggle. We give them the best protection
we can, but if we isolate them they can turn around
and say, *' You're excluding me.”
A lot of times we get attacked for this. Some
people say that we hide behind our children, but
it’s not true at all. It’s very important that our
children be a part of the struggle and see what's
happening. A year after the RCMP riot, one of our
kids wrote an essay in school about what happened
on Parliament Hill. All the other kids talked about
the opening of Parliament, and she talked about
the RCMP attacking our people. The teacher
wouldn't accept it. She said, **Maybe, Luana, the
RCMP was hard on Indians and did this kind of
thing in your parents' time, but things are different
now.” Luana said, “ОП no, they're not different. I
was there. I saw it with my own eyes.” And so the
teacher changed the subject and went on to some-
thing else.
For our people, and our children, and their
children, the struggle is on and there's no turning
back. The lines are drawn. It's quite clear to Native
people that we'll never be assimilated and that we'll
never stop fighting until we see the end of a society
built upon racism and political oppression.
"When People Are Calling, You Go"
When we got to the Hill we saw soldiers with
bayonet guns—some kind of honour guard—and
RCMP lined up in ranks of four in front of the
Parliament Buildings. First Louis Cameron spoke,
presenting our demands and asking Trudeau or an
Indian Affairs official to come and talk to us. They
are elected to serve the needs of Native people
too—they should respond to what we have to say.
We stood and waited for some government repre-
sentatives to show up and talk to us. No one
came. We said we would give them 25 minutes to
send someone out. Two hours later we were still
standing there waiting. We got there at 1:30 p.m.
and at 4:00 we still stood waiting .. . .
We were unarmed men, women and children.
And their riot squad came and started beating us.
We fell down on our backs, our hands and knees
and they kept on smashing at us with their sticks.
Didn't matter if we were retreating—they were
trampling and smashing up....
There were soldiers there, and tanks and
bayonets to back up the police. There to protect
Trudeau and his likes, | guess. And they obey even
if people are unarmed. Then the riot squad came
on over the loudspeakers and started telling us to
move, and we were driven onto the street. Lots of
people could hardly walk—their brothers and
sisters walked beside them, holding them up. The
drums were beating.
BACK FROM THE HILL 69
Chief Indi
ian grou
wants clash esum.
OTTAWA
NAA din ОРУ = Ме) мше
federal
(NIB) Mee Brotherhood рага building near
an i sterday called ment Hill. Trudell sai
an independent’ investigation ee мига ы Indis
But he sai
into Monday's vi said the
xo Mondays violent melas made up of belan “= a back un f'a: the border to
Sates Se
Neutral probe called for on
Parliament Hill clash
By GORD HENDERSON they are not
An independent 0m- frustration bi Inquiry again demanded
d alate.
budsman should investigate ca s Governme
complains about Es themselves Wil e я А
combing of ап Indian p . iH "Ol t
handling of, on Paria: “and dont into МО en rotes
demoni last week, SAYS loopholes OF
ment, "Borovoy, general money to he | ê E
counsel, for the Canadian problem. The Canadian Federation of
Студ Liberties Uni", “The dispa суй Liberties and Human
eal з à
the what the law,
A number of questions
In е е
dians want investigation
uod er with riot squad
promises, Aus Mr. 186 CCLU
Borovoy. carried out TP
“An internal investiga- investigations Whiteside later tol
is mo: good enou problems i conference that Mr,
sai KEMP Ont. area, o Wd promised to look over, the
„stigators would be concealed соч На Tonal information before
investigator Бас :
in пегабие to accusations of justice for Ind asain ео О.
-overinB being biased. Many Indians, пуш Uu Mr. Borovo: said all the
Vovering up or being f. r
ugyen if the inve reserves well outside volame can't be placed on of-
Кей out fairly the Kenora, have to take US Pisas in isolated areas. He
is Solem is it won't be at а cost OF 60, said the real problem is
roblem Ж fair—it won't to be pres" ourt government apathy in
perceived appearance 0 appearances Bo heen Canada.
have the арр. charge
justice.
Rights Associa
day might телге
„an with айбам
7
0 FOLLOWING THE RED PATH
Later that night back at the Embassy one
young brother collapsed. He had been badly
injured and had been coughing and spitting
blood, but he didn't tell anyone. He collapsed
later that night. We took him to the hospital. |
don't know how many of our people went to
hospital. They put in the papera list of how many
RCMP were injured, but not how many Indians.
My daughter wanted to go with me. She
laughs now and talks about how scared Trudeau
was, hiding behind the walls. She has no fear of
the police and says she feels brave to be fighting
for her rights. | heard her yelling there on the Hill:
“Give us our brothers back; | may be small but I'm
willing to fight you."
"What did | learn from going to Ottawa with
the Caravan?" she said. "I learned people have to
fight for their rights."
Interview with Eetsah, The Arrow, Nov./Dec. 1974
Quotations taken from a brief prepared by the
Canadian Federation of Civil Liberties and Human
Rights Associations, October 1974
"The RCMP had the guns, the bayonets and the
tear gas; we had a drum and a sheet of paper with
our demands."
—Louis Cameron, Ottawa Journal, 1 October 1974
"The Indians were not met with understanding
government officials. They were met by men with
big sticks, hard hats, and a clubbing. What kind of
mentality is that?"
— Wally Firth, MP, CP Wire Service, 4 October 1974
“The government provoked the Indian demon-
stration.”
—The Right Honourable John Diefenbaker, MP,
CP Wire Service, 3 October 1974
“И was obviously the police and not the native
people which started the upheaval.”
—psychiatrist, bystander, Ottawa Journal,
7 October 1974
“It was a police riot.”
—anonymous Ottawa City policeman
“When the riot squad appeared my first reaction
was ‘Oh no, you're kidding'."
—Hal Anthony, reporter and general manager,
Contemporary News, Lowell Green's Open Line,
CFRA, 1 October 1974
“Never in modern memory have armed troops and
а riot squad been pressed into action to help the
normal security of RCMP during a demon-
stration.”
—Toronto Star, 1 October 1974
“There should be an inquiry."
—Inuit Tapirisat of Canada, Native Council of
Canada, and the Canadian Association in Support
of Native Peoples, press release, 4 October 1974
“A man was collared by four policemen. The non-
Indian was forced to the ground. One policeman
put a knee into the man's forehead while two
others held him down and a third put on
handcuffs. He was dragged away his face bloody.
A Mountie grabbed and tossed aside a reporter
who was making notes."
— Robert Avery. reporter, Ottawa Journal,
1 October 1974
"During the skirmish riot squad officers pushed
people off the stone wall on top of the Hill, а
fifteen foot drop, and down the stairs using their
clubs liberally on demonstrators as well as
bystanders."
— Paul Mitchell and Keith Reynolds, reporters,
Canadian University Press, 1 October 1974
"One Indian has a possible broken arm. She was
hit by a policeman's riot stick."
— CP Wire Service, 4 October 1974
“1 required three stitches on my skull as it was cut
right down to the bone."
— Perry Schooner, Indian demonstrator
“А full investigation of the incident must be held."
— editorial, Toronto Star, 2 October 1974
“There should be an independent investigation of
the unnecessary violence by the police.”
—Union of Ontario Indians, Grand Council Treaty
No. 3, Grand Council Treaty No. 9, Association of
Iroquois and Allied Indians, London Evening Free
Press, 2 October 1974
"Evidence indicates that native people were the
victims rather than the perpetrators of violence.
There should be an independent inquiry."
—Ottawa Citizen, 4 October 1974
BACK FROM THE HILL 7
NO Our <
А LOWE!
г as
RISE
TLE РД
72 FOLLOWING THE RED PATH
XIII The Native People’s Embassy
The building that we occupied in Ottawa belonged
to the National Capital Commission. It was called
the Carbide Mills Building. We returned there after
the riot and licked our wounds, and then we had a
general meeting. It was a big gathering; there were
some outsiders, but the majority of the people were
from the Caravan.
Some people were trying to blame the
CPC(ML) for what had happened, because when the
riot squad attacked us we were caught between
them and the CPC(ML). People were angry and frus-
trated. But Butch Elliot said, **We have to remem-
ber that it was the people in front of us who were
the enemy, not the people behind us. Let's get on
with the things we have to do now." So we started
talking.
It was decided then that we would set up the
Native People's Embassy. Louis and myself and a
few others opposed it because we felt that we had
accomplished what we came for. Our idea had been
to have a Caravan, to be in Ottawa on the opening
day of Parliament, and to draw public attention to
our problems as Native people. And we had been
successful. But a lot of the younger people, and
some of the other people on the Central Commit-
tee, felt that we should set up an Embassy and try
to build alliances with other communities—Native
communities and Third World communities. Some
of us felt that we were not equipped to do that kind
of thing at that time. I felt that we should go back
and work in our communities and tell people what
had happened. But others saw the Embassy as a
long-term project, and the majority felt that we
should stay.
It was well-organized at first. There was
security to register who was going in and out. We
had a nursery; there was a first-aid station; there
were offices and typewriters; we had people
working on press releases and newsletters.
People would come and go. We had people
coming in from Six Nations and other areas in On-
tario, and university students came to visit us.
Food was brought in—once again the Quakers
helped us, and some big company donated a whole
bunch of food. Whenever we went outside we went
in a group so nobody would bother us, and the
only people who were harassed were the people
who stayed outside by themselves.
We called ourselves the Native People’s Em-
bassy, and even had some writing paper made up
with that name on it. People wrote letters asking
for support; we prepared press releases; and Louis
Cameron made statements to the media.
It was an enormous place, and we had people
scattered all over it. Because we had children,
Pauline and I stayed in the nursery area and tried
to help there. By this time there was a whole bunch
of kids—maybe thirty—and all the fathers and
mothers worked with each other. The young
people were sleeping all over the place. Some of the
young brothers would stay up all night and sleep all
day. I guess they were kind of scared at nighttime
because they would walk around banging their
heels.
The building was very old and a lot of wash-
rooms didn’t work; the toilets were always
plugging. Sanitary facilities weren’t that good, and
we didn’t have good cooking facilities. It was a big
place and hard to keep clean, even though we had
cleaning details.
A couple of weeks after the riot, morale star-
ted breaking down. Someone came up with the
THE NATIVE PEOPLE’S EMBASSY 73
Louis Cameron with Doug Durham (right), who was later exposed as an undercover FBI agent.
idea that we get John Trudell or somebody else
from the American Indian Movement to come up
and talk to us. We got a message across, and then
heard that somebody was coming to spend a few
days with us. We got a call to go out to the airport
to pick up this brother, as we called him, and he
had no problem getting into the country; he just
came right off the plane with his stuff.
When we got back to the Embassy it was late,
but we started to talk. I had never seen him before
though I had heard a little bit about him. His name
was Doug Durham. He had worked closely with
Dennis Banks, and was supposed to be head of
security for the American Indian Movement. And
he fit in quite well. He spent a couple of days with
us, talked to the people, had a few press con-
74 FOLLOWING THE RED PATH
ferences. People liked him; he made a good im-
pression.
After he was exposed as an undercover FBI
agent people said that they knew all the time, but
he had completely fooled all of us. In fact, I kind
of liked the guy; I got to know him a bit. At that
time I was a strong supporter of communism—the
Chinese kind of communism—so he was interested
in talking to me and told me how many friends he
had that were communist supporters. I never told
him anything that I didn't tell anybody else, but he
had fooled everybody completely so І imagine he
gave the FBI and the RCMP a lot of information. 105
kind of funny to think about it, because we gave
him security; we were worried about him. It wasn't
until months and months later that he was exposed
as the informer he really was. Now he's found his
true calling. He's lecturing for the John Birch
Society, a racist organization like the Western
Guard.
The Embassy lasted for a few months, but as
other priorities came up people went back to their
own communities. It dwindled down to a few
young people who really had nowhere to go, and
they finally decided it was in the best interests of
the people to close it down. The Native organiza-
tions had opposed the Embassy because it took at-
tention away from them, so they were happy to see
it go. In fact, they helped arrange funds to get
people home.
There was a squabble over that building while
we were there. The National Indian Brotherhood
wanted to use it as a historical museum, and some
people wanted to turn it into a bird sanctuary.
Finally a fire settled it. After our people left, that
building burned to the ground, so the birds got it
after all.
We heard later that the RCMP blamed me for
that fire, but at the time I was supposed to be bur-
ning down the Embassy I was having a meeting
with a number of people in Toronto. In fact, we
were always very careful about fire while we were
there.
It’s true that the fire must have been
deliberately set, because it was a stone building,
but I believe that the RCMP burned down the Em-
bassy to make sure we couldn't use it again. We
learned later that the RCMP had experience burning
buildings; they burned down a barn in Québec so
the FLQ could not meet with the Black Panthers.
The Embassy would have been a good place to
work out of, for any other mass demonstration.
When we had a vigil for Leonard Peltier on Parlia-
ment Hill, it could have been used as an Ottawa
base. The RCMP didn't want to put guards on that
building all the time, so their best strategy was to
destroy the Embassy and blame the people who
would have used it.
The Native people here on Victoria Island in
Ottawa, as in Cornwall, Alcatraz, James Bay, Cold
Lake, Wounded Knee, Kenora, Cache Creek, and
Parliament Hill, ask all of you to help us win the
battle for our culture and our independence. We
ask this because we believe in the right of self-
determination of all people.
We, in the spirit of Louis Riel, whose statue was
unveiled by your Prime Minister on October 2,
1968, hold on to this embassy as a symbol of
resistance for the social justice Mr. Trudeau
spoke of so easily.
The United Nations has said this year is Inter-
national Women's Year. Your government has
joined this fight to better the position of women in
Canada. Why not fight for our rights and dignity
too?
It has been hard living in Ottawa under unfriendly
pressure from government and the pressure of
indifference of the public. But we must continue
to resist.
We stand tall and proud as a symbol of
resistance! And, if your police beat us into the
ground, the spirit of the land will make us, and
others, rise up again and again. We will be free.
Stand with us Canadians and maybe one day we
can stand together in peace.
When that day comes, we will turn the flag of your
nation right side up, as it should be when people
are free.
John Graham and others, Native People's Embassy
John Graham took this inside photograph of the Native
People's Embassy on February 5, 1975, using Bruce
Paton's pre-set camera.
THE NATIVE PEOPLE'S EMBASSY 75
“One reason we had organized the Caravan was because we were very disillusioned with official Native organizations
like the National Indian Brotherhood. '*
76 FOLLOWING THE RED PATH
XIV Government- Funded
Native Organizations
One reason we had organized the Caravan was be-
cause we were very disillusioned with official
Native organizations like the National Indian
Brotherhood. We knew that they were ineffective,
and that they were not really helping to change
things for Native people. In fact, their main role
seemed to be to keep the lid on Native protest and
Native demands. The government had created and
funded these organizations in the first place, and it
was able to use them to protect itself from any kind
of confrontation or direct criticism. When Native
people tried to go around the organizations, the
government's line was always, ‘‘We can only talk
to your official representatives." Even this was
false, because the government wasn't talking to the
official Native leaders. But in 1974, the reality of
Native organizations was well established. Many of
the people on the Caravan had been in govern-
ment-funded organizations and gone through that
whole, frustrating experience.
Before becoming involved with the Caravan, I
had been the Vice-President of the Ontario Métis
and Non-Status Indian Association—OMNSIA. I
was very naive about Native organizations at first,
but when I realized what they were all about, I left.
A lot of people get into Native organizations with
the intention of helping their people, but to be-
come a leader you have to become opportunistic.
It's a dog-eat-dog world, and you learn all the poli-
tical tricks. It's just how white politicians operate;
it’s their arena. But after being in Native organiza-
tions for a period of time, you realize what it's all
about. Even myself, who's very slow at learning,
realized.
When people are in the Native organizations
long enough they become like the Indian Affairs
agents, the advisors and consultants who feed off
the backs of their own people. A lot of people feel
that we need them, but we don't. They need us;
they make their living off our problems. It's impor-
tant that we understand that, and do something
about it. What a lot of people do about it is go
along for the ride themselves.
I had to look at this, and ask myself, **What
am I going to do? Do I go along with this, or do I
fight it?” I decided to fight. I didn't know how to
go about it so I was vulnerable, and I got involved
in radical, white politics. And of course my politi-
cal enemies jumped all over me.
I don't begrudge Native people the benefits
they get by working for Native organizations. I'd
like to see every Native person have a good house
and a car and a job. But because people in the
Native organizations are so limited in what they
can do, it often comes at the expense of their own
people. I wasn't prepared to go along with that,
and many others also got out. There are a few in-
dividual leaders who have been able to accomplish
a lot within the Native organizations. One of the
best and strongest is Jim Sinclair of the Métis
Society of Saskatchewan. In spite of the corrupt
political arena he's in, he's been able to act in a
principled way.
Another Native leader who has shown the
ability to serve, and one of the shrewdest Native
politicians that 1 know, is Stan Daniels—the in-
and-out President of the Alberta Métis Society.
He's even foxier and craftier than Harold Car-
dinal. Stan Daniels really knows the enemy, but for
his own reasons he will not fight the system; he's
engaged in reformist activities. I still have quite a
bit of respect for him. He's the one who pointed
GOVERNMENT-FUNDED NATIVE ORGANIZATIONS T
ош to me how naive I was, when 1 was involved in
OMNSIA in 1973. That constructive criticism hurt
me, because of my big ego. 1 thought I knew what I
was doing, and he pointed out how much I didn't
know. Stan, who doesn't need or want to wear any
kind of regalia, like buttons or braids or chokers,
feels very proud of being a Métis and part of the
Native movement. Because of his wisdom, and his
analysis of the situation, I often feel that if he be-
came a revolutionary the movement would move
by leaps and bounds.
We approached the Native organizations for
support, but they didn't really know how to deal
with the Caravan. Some of them gave us money
under the table, but most of them resented us.
They felt that we were troublemakers, and that we
were undermining their leadership. The people who
came out in strong support were Fred House of the
British Columbia Association of Non-Status In-
dians, Jim Sinclair, Harry Daniels of the Native
Council of Canada, and Art Manuel, who was with
the Youth Organization of the National Indian
Brotherhood.
Except for Indian Rights for Indian Women,
the leadership of the Native women's organizations
did not get involved with the Caravan, though
there were a lot of women up on the Hill who be-
longed to Native organizations. We were disap-
pointed; we felt that they could have been more
forward. But to be fair, they were just getting to-
gether and organizing themselves at the time.
One of the most reactionary groups turned out
to be the one I had been with—the Ontario Métis
and Non-Status Indian Association. It had been or-
ganized to be a political group, but it failed to
move in that direction. It concentrated on pro-
grammes, and ignored its role as the political voice
of the over 80,000 Métis and Non-Status Indians in
Ontario. It has never really taken a political stand
on anything. Just after the occupation of Ani-
cinabe Park, the government met with some Native
leaders in Ottawa and asked one of the executive
members of OMNSIA, **What's your position on
Native militancy?" He answered, “Well during
Kenora they never gave us a phone call, so we
didn't have any position." The Native people in
the room were really embarrassed. And this was
the kind of person we had to deal with when we
78 FOLLOWING THE RED PATH
approached Native organizations.
We were disappointed in George Manuel too.
When we went to meet him during the Caravan he
talked to us paternalistically, like he was the father
and we were the children. And he had been
drinking, at 4:00 in the afternoon. We thought,
“Well, so much for the leader of the National In-
dian Brotherhood." I was embarrassed for him,
because we had a lot of young people with us who
were status Indians and they were very
disillusioned when they came out of the office. I
tried not to be too liberal. I just said ** Well, in that
position they drive you to drink."
The person who our people were most dis-
appointed in was Harold Cardinal, because he was
the most visible Native leader in Canada at the
time. We felt that he should have taken a stronger
stand. Then in 1977 he seemed to join the white
establishment by taking a heavy government job in
the Department of Indian Affairs, as Director-
General of the Alberta region.
Many people on the Caravan wanted to see
Indian Affairs run by a Native person, and that's
why the Manifesto demanded that George Manuel
be made head of Indian Affairs. І personally,
along with some others, opposed it because we felt
that it would just be a token position. We felt that
Indian Affairs should be abolished altogether—the
Department of Indian Affairs was created to ex-
ploit and oppress Native people, and as long as it
stands it will continue to do that. We didn't just
want to rock the boat; we wanted to sink it.
The government is putting more Native people
into Indian Affairs now, so it can have greater con-
trol over what's happening on the reserves. In a
way it's doing some good, because it's bringing the
role of Indian Affairs out into the open. Native
people are really beginning to look at the whole
thing, and see how it operates. On every reserve
now, the question is self-determination. People
want to run their own communities, and they've
seen that they have the ability to do it. But if Native
people don't move quickly it might be too late.
When you develop that kind of colonial mentality
you're going to have goons coming onto the re-
serves—Native people enforcing with the stick
what the government wants, just like it happened in
South Dakota. As people say, every policy the
Indian protesters
lack credibility,
says Buchanan
üT 1;
No results gained :
by Indian protest,
says Buchanan
Americans have tried and failed, the Canadian
government will try ten years later.
After the RCMP riot, the organizations who
had supported us before became more supportive,
and the ones who didn’t were forced off the fence.
Some people made political hay off it. One was
Gloria George, the President of the Native Council
of Canada, who later told people that she had been
on the Hill during the riot, and acted like she'd
been one of the people attacked. She was on the
Hill, but many of us felt that she was there as an
observer; she wasn't exactly one of us. We ques-
tioned her leadership too. Though she was pro-
gressive in some ways we felt that she was en-
couraging Native people to assimilate, so we did
not think too highly of her. Harry Daniels, who is
now President of the Native Council of Canada,
was supportive to the Caravan but he was only Sec-
retary-Treasurer at the time so he was limited in the
support he could give us.
One of the things the Caravan accomplished
was to give Native organizations direct access to
the Federal Cabinet. We had organized the Cara-
van because we knew that the Native organizations
were not being listened to, but the RCMP riot ex-
Govt. policies heard by Indi:
OCT 1> рї
as Buchanan visits reserves
paid off,
ctione slashe'
pureauc
suni es
Looks like © breakthrough’
Demonstration provided access
to Cabinet, Indian says
posed and embarrassed the government, and for-
ced them to meet with the Native leadership which
they had created and tried to ignore.
Judd Buchanan, who was the Minister of In-
dian Affairs, would not meet with us after the riot
but he and a special Cabinet committee met with
the leaders of the National Indian Brotherhood. At
that meeting, they agreed that the Brotherhood
would be able to talk with the Cabinet on a regular
basis.
George Manucl gave the credit to the Native
People's Caravan. He said, “И looks like we made
a breakthrough, and I think we can credit to a large
degree the grassroots people saying 'enough,
enough." So the Native People's Caravan was
able to get the Prime Minister and the Cabinet to
meet with them. Though it took a few lumps on
peoples’ heads to do it, we were quite pleased that
we were able to accomplish that.
But as soon as the NIB met with the Cabinet,
they abandoned their demand that an inquiry be
called into the RCMP riot on Parliament Hill. And
the opportunity was lost to expose the role of the
RCMP in brutalizing and oppressing Native people.
GOVERNMENT-FUNDED NATIVE ORGANIZATIONS 79
Interview with Patrick Cody, of the Laurentian
Alliance of Métis and Non-status Indians,
February 17th, 1977
PAT: In September, 1974, | was Local
President of the Non-Status Indian and Métis
Association in Montréal, and we had heard that
some Native people were going to Ottawa to
demonstrate. | knew a little bit about the Caravan,
but because the media does not cover the same
stuff in Québec as in the rest of Canada
everything that we heard about the Caravan was
more or less word of mouth.
We were coming from another perspective,
too, because of the different process of coloniza-
tion we had experienced, being beaten more than
once by different colonial powers. The French
were the first to come into Québec; then the
English took over and had a different way of
dealing with Native people. Now, with the James
Bay project, big money from the United States
was being used to take away our land. We felt we
had to concentrate our efforts on the provincial
government, which was dealing directly with
Native people in James Bay, so we decided that
we would not get completely involved in the
Caravan as members.
But some of our Montagnais people were
interested in going down to Ottawa and showing
solidarity. Basically, they speak their own
language— Montagnais— and French as a
second language. They speak very little English.
Soalot of people felt that this would be a way of
joining together with other Native people and
saying that even though we're from different parts
of the country and have different histories of
oppression, after three or four hundred years
we're all in the same boat.
The Montagnais were from about five
hundred miles northeast of Montréal along the St.
Lawrence River, and they were pretty broke, so we
started trying to raise money for the trip. We
finally got some sympathetic non-native people to
help us send our people to the Hill. Within a week
we got it together and went down there. And we
ended up sending thirty to forty people from
Québec— Montagnais people, Mohawk people
from Caughnawaga, and some Algonquin people
from northwestern Québec. But we were more or
less the tail end of the show.
We came in late, and got there when
everyone was moving up the steps on Parliament
Hill. We were surprised to see as many Québec
Natives as there were; we saw a lot of people that
we knew. And a lot of us could see what was
coming, because we'd had experiences with
different demonstrations in Québec. We had seen
80 FOLLOWING THE RED PATH
what the government would do to non-natives, like
when the Army came into Québec in 1970, and we
figured that they'd be even tougher with Native
people. Because of the James Bay question, it
was a pretty high priority for the government to
make sure that Natives didn't get the upper hand
in any kind of negotiation or confrontation. And
we felt that the government always over-reacted
to any situation where Native people grouped
together. It's nothing new; it's the government's
historical response to Native people. | would
consider it strange if the RCMP hadn't reacted
that way.
VERN: What did you and your people think
when you saw the red banners of the CPC(ML)?
PAT: That kind of turned us off. We had
experienced a lot of that stuff in Québec, and we
felt that in one way Native people were being used
as guinea pigs, just to make news for the Maoists.
We felt that they were being opportunists, and we
didn't really want to get involved with them. We
really would have preferred an all Native thing, but
we said, “Well, if it’s going to be Natives and non-
natives together, maybe the non-natives should
go up front instead of pushing from behind."
VERN: You felt they were pushing from
behind?
РАТ: | felt that, yes.
VERN: Under the circumstances, how do you
think everyone behaved?
РАТ: | think the Native people were pretty
good. | saw a lot of provocative actions on the part
of the RCMP and the soldiers. We were just
standing there, watching people drumming, when
the soldiers came marching out and stood right in
front of everyone, and then turned around and
faced us with bayonets. They had these smirks on
their faces, like “We're going to take care of you,
boy, if you move." And we knew it; we were
looking them right in the eye too.
VERN: You were the local President of the
Laurentian Alliance. Do you know how the
provincial body reacted to the Caravan?
РАТ: That was funny. Something happened
that really showed me where some of the elected
leadership is at. | was in the provincial office on
the day of the demonstration, getting some
people together to go to Ottawa, when we got a
telex from the national office of the Native
Council of Canada. And on the telex it said, "What
should we do? Should we support the Native
People's Caravan?" It seemed liked if we
supported it we were going to lose our credibility
with the government as being middle-of-the-road,
moderate people. And we knew that that telex had
gone out to every provincial association. What
that showed to me was that when Native groups
have to think about whether they're going to
support other Native groups or side with the
government, then there's something
fundamentally wrong with the system: because
we should never divide our own people. And we
said, "Well Jesus, if we have to tell them what to
do, in terms of taking a position, then they're not
in touch with what's happening." We decided
then and there that we would definitely support
the Caravan as a provincial group.
VERN: What was the talk around Ottawa after
the riot on Parliament Hill? Do you feel that the
Caravan opened the doors of the government for
the National Indian Brotherhood?
PAT: There's a lot of Native groups in Ottawa
that won't come out and say so, but they are kind
of happy that that demonstration took place. !
talked to a lot of guys, and what they told me was
that if this thing hadn't happened, then today we'd
still be on first base negotiating with the govern-
ment. But after the demonstration, the
government realized that Native people meant
business, and that they'd better start talking to
some moderate Native people who they could sit
down and have dialogue with. They could either
negotiate with the moderate, elected leadership,
or negotiate directly with people at the grass-
roots level, people who are probably a lot tougher
to negotiate with. It's kind of like a gentleman's
agreement now, though we're not necessarily
dealing with gentlemen. The government realized,
after the riot, that if they didn't start coming up
with some reasonable solutions to Native
peoples' problems, they were probably going to
have to face more demonstrations in many areas
of the country. And they wouldn't be able to put
these down as easily as they did a group of
unarmed Native people on the Hill.
VERN: Since then, the Québec people that
were there . . . where are they now? What do you
think the Caravan accomplished for them?
PAT: Before that time, Native people in
Québec felt that they were all alone, that there
was nothing happening outside of Québec.
People in northern Québec never even heard
about things like Wounded Knee in the States.
But after that demonstration, and for the next
couple of years, there was more and more interest
in finding out what is going on in other provinces,
in other parts of North America. A lot of our
problem has been isolation—linguistic and
geographical isolation—but now there's a new
awareness that there are Native people fighting
forthe same ideals and objectives outside of the
province. We know that we're not alone, and that
whatever happens to us affects all Native people.
We were able to see that when Native people
stand up for what is right, the government is ready
to put us down just as hard as if they were facing
another army. They're as afraid of a couple of
hundred Native people getting together as they
are of 10,000 guys with guns.
It's been about three years since that
demonstration on Parliament Hill, and a lot of
water has gone under the bridge. Since then, a lot
of the Native people who were in some way
involved with that demonstration have developed
a greater awareness of Native peoples' position
vis-à-vis the government, and vis-à-vis the force of
capitalism in North America—especially in
Québec, where big business has been taking big
chunks of our land for development. We see more
similarities between ourselves and, say, people in
Chile, where the same mines are ripping off the
people there, and our people in northern Québec.
One-sixth of our entire province is going to be
flooded, and all our Native people in the north are
going to have to be relocated. American
companies have big mines up there, and private
tourist clubs where a Native person has to pay
$6.00 a day to go fishing.
What we found out later, about the James
Bay settlement, was that a lot of Native people
who are not Cree, like the Montagnais, the
Algonquins, and the Attaviks, who we call Téte-
de-Boule, were involved in these agreements
without even knowing it. We just started to find out
later how much we were going to be affected. It's
shown Native people that we don't have much of a
choice about accepting those agreements;
they're going to be forced down our throats. So
now we're redefining our position as Natives in
Québec. We've been looking at the situation and
seeing that we're not just Native people in
Québec, but part of the entire scene now.
GOVERNMENT-FUNDED NATIVE ORGANIZATIONS 8!
ntu enr ыс...
Ken Basil, Jim Wenjack, Louis Cameron and Ed Burnstick outside the Vancouver Indian Friendship Centre, on Vine Street
82 FOLLOWING THE RED PATH
XV What's After Tomorrow?
We didn't always have time, during the Caravan,
to analyze everything that was happening—it all
happened so fast. But some things did become
clear. I think if the Caravan did anything, it
opened peoples' eyes. It showed us that struggle
was possible.
А lot of people might say **Why hadn't you
seen this before?’’ But I feel that we had not been
allowed to make our own mistakes before. Most of
our lives, we'd been made to suffer from the mis-
takes made on our behalf—by Indian Affairs, the
Children's Aid, all these agencies. We didn't really
have any choice.
We always thought, and always were taught,
that we should learn from white people. But on the
Caravan we realized that a lot of non-native people
could learn from us. In fact, many non-native
people were very willing to learn what we went
through and how we think and how we feel. Many
working people who came to the rallies were there
not just to support or out of curiosity, but to learn.
And it's very important that we understand that.
I think a lot of non-natives were learning, too,
during the Caravan, how to support. They were so
used to leading and telling; they found it awkward
to support. And we found it very awkward and
strange to lead. We didn't quite know how to do it,
and we made some mistakes. But we learned from
those mistakes,
It was an educational Caravan for all the
people on it—with a very important lesson up on
the Hill. That's where class was dismissed! The
teacher came out with a club. Out of that Caravan,
there are people now in the struggle who know who
the enemy is. The church, the school, the govern-
ment and the media had made a lot of our people
believe that we are each other's enemy. But we
began to understand, through working together,
that we are not.
And I think that Native people on the Caravan
started to realize that working people aren't their
enemies, that working people are in some cases
taken for just as much of a ride as Native people.
Up until '74, Natives and workers were pretty iso-
lated from each other—Natives believing that
working people are just a bunch of honkies and
rednecks out to get Native people, and working
people believing that Native people are just a bun-
ch of shiftless, lazy bums. This was the image that
the government and the church and all its vehicles
had successfully promoted. And "74 started to
crack the foundation of those lies.
Native people learned that Canadian working
people are interested in their job, their family, and
an honest day's pay for an honest day's work.
They don't really feel one way or another about
Native people. And Canadian working people
learned that there are still Native people around,
that the Native way of life has not disappeared into
the museums. I've talked to taxi drivers since the
Caravan, who've told me quite bluntly that they'd
seen a few drunks, and that what they'd heard of
Native people wasn't good. A lot of them said that
they couldn't have cared less about Native people
up until that time, but that the riot on the Hill and
Kenora and Cache Creek made them wonder about
the reality of Native people. All of the publicity,
good and bad, showed them that Native people are
still here, and still fighting.
WHAT'S AFTER TOMORROW? 83
Our people are starting to understand that,
from the beginning, the RCMP has been our
enemy—always has been, and always will be. It
can't be any other way unless they join us and
that's impossible, because the RCMP is a tool of the
government, to be used against us. People are be-
ginning to understand that. And it's not going to
make our situation any better to have our people
join the RCMP or the Department of Indian Af-
fairs. In fact, it will make things worse, because
then our own people will be used against us. This
has happened already. Some of the Native RCMP
are very brutal, because they want to prove to their
masters that they're loyal and doing their job well.
History repeats itself. When people were fighting
for their independence in India, their own people
were used against them, and they were very hard
and very cruel.
The Caravan also showed us that we had over-
estimated the enemy. The RCMP know that Native
people are not basically aggressive, and so they're
taught to intimidate us. That's their tactic; that's
the way they train. But on Parliament Hill a lot of
our people were fighting hand to hand with the
RCMP, and we were throwing them around. They
weren't invincible.
The Caravan was a testing ground all the way
around, and I think that’s where a lot of us started
to get honest with ourselves. It made us look at
ourselves, and at our situation. It's hard for people
to analyze their situation when they're just trying
to put bannock and lard on the table, just trying to
survive in the reserves and the Métis colonies and
the cities. But in 1974 people said “О.К., we're
going to survive, but we're going to survive with
pride and dignity." This is one of the things the
Caravan taught us. As Native people we're not
doing anything if we don't have that self-worthi-
ness and pride and dignity that was given to us by
our ancestors. Most of us come from very proud
backgrounds. | myself am the grandson of a here-
ditary chief, and I asked myself in 1974, “If my
grandfather could come and look at me now,
would he be pleased?” I didn't think he would. So
I decided I would try to shape up.
People were beginning to think and feel like
Native people. We're conditioned пог to think that
way, not to feel that way, but in 1974 all that con-
ditioning was being cast aside.
84 FOLLOWING THE RED PATH
It was a historical year: the Caravan, Cache
Creek, Kenora, the RCMP riot, the Embassy. Ever
since the white man landed here we’ve had resis-
tance, but 1974 was a turning point because then
we had a massive resistance of Native people all
across the country. And it was the foundation of
an even stronger resistance to come. At that time
some people were still thinking about assimilation,
but 774 turned that around. A lot of Native people
decided that from there on it would be genocide or
nationhood. Simple as that. They would do every-
thing they could to oppose genocide, and give
everything—their lives included—to achieve
nationhood. And there are people from the Cara-
van who have now become strong resistance
fighters, and will play a very strong part in building
a nation.
We hear a lot about Confederation. Well Con-
federation doesn’t mean much to Native people. 1
think Native people have been pretty patient.
We've spent 400 years trying to get along with our
non-native neighbours, and finally we’re saying
that we'll go along without them, and even in spite
of them if we have to. Native people are going to
take their destiny into their own hands, and fight
for what they believe in.
Sometimes so-called prominent Canadians say
**What have the Indians done for this country?” A
lot of people on the reserves really resent that, be-
cause many of them gave their sons and daughters
to serve in the wars. I believe that if there was
another foreign war, our people would not respond
to it. The next time Native people pick up guns it
will be in North America to defend our land, and
not for someone else's interest. So though there
was always resistance, I think '74 started to
develop mass resistance among Native people. And
it won over a lot of non-native people to our side.
The Caravan also taught us to strengthen the
family. We had allowed our families to be broken
up, our children to be taken away from us, and our
old people to be shuffled off into old folks’ homes.
Many of our women started to look at themselves
too, and to be proud of their Nativeness. They've
thought about women's liberation, and they sup-
port it, but they believe that they should be with
their people and struggle with their people as a
whole.
BRUCE PATON
Looking back at the Caravan, we can see how
important it was. Some people will try to under-
mine it, will say that it wasn't important, but it was
very important. Our enemies understood how im-
portant it was. They were willing to attack us. They
tried to discredit the Caravan and to break it, but
they weren't able to do that. And we were very suc-
cessful, right across the country.
In the 1930s, Canadian working people tried
to do the same thing, by railroad. They took a long
time and they only got as far as Regina, because the
opposition had enough time to isolate their leaders.
And this was one thing we learned, to keep our
leaders with us. Even though we let Louis go
ahead, we had enough leaders to see that the bond
between the leaders and the people could not be
broken. And because we moved so quickly, the
government didn't really have a chance to stop us.
So though the time factor worked against us in one
way, it also worked in our favour. The Caravan
happened so quickly that we were on their doorstep
before they knew it. A lot of Native people have
been taught to say, “What have we accom-
plished?” but we accomplished what Canadian
working people weren't able to do before us.
I think everyone who was on the Caravan
benefited from it in one way or another. Maybe not
at the time, but later. Some of the people I met
there were an important part of my life, and
though we had to go our separate ways we'll always
be in tune with each other and respect each other.
In struggle that's the way it is.
It was a small Caravan, but we had good
representation across the country, and all the
people who learned something went back to
wherever they came from—the cities, the reserves,
the colonies, the jails, whatever—to share those ex-
periences and show that struggle is possible. A lot
of our people had lost hope— people who were al-
coholics, or drug addicts, or in prison, or living on
WHAT'S AFTER TOMORROW? 85
the streets. The Caravan kind of inspired them; it
helped change their attitudes. They'd say “Сее,
look at those people!"
Some of our people hadn't agreed with the
Caravan, but when the RCMP riot was shown on
television, Native people right across Canada be-
came really angry. 1 remember one waiter, a big
strong Native brother who was working in a bar,
just trying to get by. He said he was infuriated
when he saw his people being treated like that.
Some guy in the bar shouted **Hey Chief! Get your
ass over here with some beer!" He went over and
gave him the beer tray and told him to stick it up
his ass. He said the riot changed his way of think-
ing. And I think a lot of people needed that; they
were going around in a vicious circle.
On some people it didn't fizz at all. 1 know
some people who were so heavy into drinking that
they didn't even know what had happened in
Kenora, or on the Caravan. But when we travelled
around and talked to people they started to ask us
about it, and said that they would like to get in-
volved. Right across the country it had that effect.
Some people felt bad that they hadn't been in-
volved, but we told them there will be an oppor-
tunity again; the struggle will go on and on. So
even the people who didn't know anything about
the Caravan in 1974 learned about it later, and be-
gan to see how important it was.
The Caravan helped to break down the isola-
tion between Native people, and it taught us how
important it is to organize. One individual or group
or tribe can only do so much, but when we put our
forces together, we can accomplish much more. It
showed us how important it is to discipline our-
selves. It showed us how important it is to develop
our own information and publishing network. It
showed us how important it is to educate the non-
native. It was a real exciting time.
Since 1974, I've seen the resistance grow
stronger and more organized. There is more or-
ganizing in the local communities; more groups are
breaking out of their isolation; groups are forming
alliances. People are working in their own areas,
but they have people travelling back and forth to
keep communications open. A moccasin telegraph
has been developed. We’re not relying on the mails
but on our own people—couriers going across the
country, giving information. So though it’s not in
86 FOLLOWING THE RED PATH
the headlines, the movement has been growing.
We’ve seen the Dene Nation concept emerge, and
the Native Studies Group from B.C. going to
China—they looked at their lack of involvement in
the Caravan, and became involved in the Mount
Currie roadblock.
The movement is on more of an upswing than
it was in ’74, but it’s not so visible. It’s not con-
frontation politics; it’s organizing and building for
future struggle. In the past, organizations would
build things up to a height and then—bang!—
they’d go flat. People would get discouraged and
give up. What happened in '74 was that it came to a
height and then people went back to their areas to
work. More Warrior Societies and AIM chapters
have been created; more organizing has been done;
there has been more communication between
Native organizations and militant groups. More
people have started to struggle and investigate.
And that's what we're trying to get people to do—
look at things, try to understand things, and get in-
volved. In the future there will probably be more
confrontation, but only after the groundwork has
been laid. From here on, when actions are taken
there will be more thought, more preparation, and
more analysis. This is starting to happen.
There will be some irresponsible groups and
individuals who will act on their own, but that
happens in all movements. Because our movement
is so big and broad, we have some people who use
the movement for their own purposes. Some do it
intentionally; some do it unintentionally. Quite a
few use it as their ticket, their rap, their spiel.
whatever you want to call it. They are destructive
forces because they do work without really under-
standing what they're doing. It's hard to deal with
these people.
The media has always attacked AIM, and some
of our own people have attacked it. Usually it's be-
cause they don't understand it, but sometimes it's
because of poor leadership. The movement, too,
has so many parts to it. Some of these are still in
the barrooms and the poolrooms, and sometimes
people misunderstand; they think that's the leader-
ship. Then there are the RCMP agents and the FBI
agents— people acting as agents provocateurs.
People are learning that all can't be leaders,
and we're even questioning the type of leadership
we want. All over the country right now it's very
clear that people want sober leadership, not an ir-
responsible leadership that disregards the people.
There might come a time when the American
Indian Movement will go under, but another
higher level of resistance is already starting to
form. And each tool could be used either for the
people or against the people.
I think that for Native people, the fat is in the
fire. There will be strong resistance until there is a
separate nation of Native people in North
America. The resistance will get stronger and
stronger, and become more organized, and gather
more non-native support. We are dealing with
racism within our own society, within Native
communities, while the government tries to pro-
mote it. Sometimes it looks like we're making
gains, and others like we're losing ground, but the
divisions between Native people are starting. to
break down.
Many Native people are looking at socialism
too, and trying to understand it. One Native leader
said to me, “I would rather learn about socialism
from a Native person than from a non-native.”
And Native people have a right to look into it if
they want to. Too many people—even Native
people—have been willing to accept the stereotypes
and say ‘‘an Indian is t or “ап Indian is that.”
If a Native person is interested in socialism, people
automatically write him off. And a lot of people
think that Native people are incapable of under-
standing socialism, that they just don't have the
mentality to do it. They don't think that we could
develop a Lenin or a Mao. But Native people who
are starting to understand socialism challenge that.
They feel that if Native people want to develop
socialism for Native people, they can. Our will is
unshakeable if we really believe in ourselves.
But the most important part of our movement
is going to be our understanding of Native spiri-
tualism. How we see it, and how serious we are
about it. We will not exclude Native people from
the movement because they are Christians; they
have that right. But many of us are going back to
the sacred ways of our people.
WHAT'S AFTER TOMORROW? 87
LAFoRD
John LaFord donated this drawing to the Wandering Spirit Survival School in Toronto
88 FOLLOWING THE RED PATH
XVI Following the Red Path
At the time of the Caravan I was a strong supporter
of Maoism and the CPC(ML). I had just come out of
the Ontario Métis and Non-Status Indian Associa-
tion, where I had been Vice-President, and I was
really disenchanted with government-funded
Native organizations. I was into using some very
heavy jargon—rhetoric from the left—and some
people were worried about me because they were
scared of where I was moving them to. I wasn't
sure of where I was moving myself, but I was very
bitter towards the system and I wanted to fight. I
felt, and I still believe, that socialism is the tool.
But now I understand that it must be a type of.
socialism developed by Native people. Self-deter-
mination will not come under the CPC(ML) or any
other political party like it.
Spiritualism had always been a very important
part of my life, but like many other Native people I
had been conditioned to neglect this legacy. On the
Caravan I began to develop a deeper understanding
of what spiritualism really means. I was just getting
myself together, and the Caravan helped me do
that. And I started to understand that Native
people practice more socialism than many people
in the left. We were treating each other like
brothers and sisters.
Spiritualism is not capitalism; it is not com-
munism either. It is a way of life that has been with
Native people for thousands of years. But I don't
see white people's socialism as a contradiction to
Native spiritualism. Spiritualism means that no one
owns the land; no industry exploits the people. Our
elders and medicine people are servants in every
shape and form.
Spiritualism is the land, the people, and the
sharing of this— not a class separation. Our elders
teach us that we are all part of the circle of life,
which contains the four races, the four seasons,
and everything in nature—the rivers, trees, moun-
tains, fish and animals. Every man, woman and
child is part of this circle and we communicate with
the Creator, who is outside it, through our elders.
The circle of life is a continuous cycle of all
seasons and all generations, and we live in it today
as part of yesterday and tomorrow. Our way of
life, and all of our activities, are based on the spiri-
tual understanding that we are a part of nature and
must function as part of the whole. This spiritual
awareness has been given to us by the Creator and
taught to us by our elders, who communicate with
the Creator through the pipe.
We are taught that red men and red women
came from the salt waters and were created here, in
the Western hemisphere, for a special task. The
Great Spirit has given us this land to look after and
care for so that we can pass it on to our children
and our children's children for their use. We are
the caretakers of the land, living in tune with
nature and the environment. In turn, the land will
look after us.
As part of the circle of life we must share the
resources of the land and plan its use for the bene-
fit of all. The land is our life; we depend on all
natural things for our existence. We must live at
peace with the land, for the destruction of our en-
vironment is the destruction of ourselves. And in
all our decisions, we must think about the unborn.
Of all the races, the white man has gone
against this more than any other. He has not just
harmed himself, but all races, because he is de-
stroying the environment. This is because he does
not understand the circle of life, with its seasons,
FOLLOWING THE RED PATH 89
times to rest and times to grow. The white man is
not in tune with himself or with nature; therefore
he is very dangerous. Each segment of his life is
separate from the others. As an observer of the
white man, 1 have seen him become a split per-
sonality. One side is a churchgoer, a man with con-
cern for his community; the other is a competitor,
and so greedy for power and material gain that he
does not care how he accomplishes his goals. These
two sides are separate and destructive, yet he puts
them together and makes them seem as one.
If we make a decision today, we must always
ask ourselves, “Ном will it affect the unborn?”
But capitalists don't ask themselves this question;
they don't care what happens tomorrow. We un-
derstand that we are the custodians of the land,
and not the owners. This is why we can never sell it,
or sign it away. This land was loaned to us by the
Great Spirit and we have always shared it with the
white man, but the white man has always mis-
understood our actions.
The greatest crime the white man has inflicted
on Native people in North America is trying to de-
Spirit our people, to destroy our integrated way of
life. He has used the church and government to do
this—by trying to condition us into imitations of
Europeans with European values, by ramming
Christianity down our throats, by taking our
education out of our own hands and forcing de-
structive educational processes upon us. He has
used the Indian Act to divide Native people among
themselves and to separate Native people from
their traditional way of life, by saying that one per-
son is an Indian and another person isn't.
What has made us survive as a race is the spiri-
tual life of our people. Against great odds and
great pressures, we have been able to survive four
hundred years of colonial oppression and
capitalism at its worst. Capitalism often disguises
itself as a friend, but Native people understand its
true role. Many Native people don't know the
terms I am using, but they know the effects of all
these things that are happening to them. Because of
the conditions of a corrupt society, many Native
people have been caught in the vicious circle of
alcoholism, drug addiction and out-and-out greed
which capitalism promotes. Alcohol has no place
in the Native way of life, but it has been used as an
90 FOLLOWING THE RED PATH
effective weapon to destroy us. Many Native
people have allowed themselves to be brainwashed
into underestimating their own potential and their
own capabilities as spiritual beings. But today
more and more Native people are beginning to un-
derstand spiritualism and their spiritual needs.
The return to our spiritual way of life leads
only one way, and that is towards self-deter-
mination for Native people. I strongly believe that
Native spiritualism and hard work will eventually
lead to an independent Red Nation in North
America. Of course, I don't believe that it will
come under the capitalist system. Many of our
traditions and many of our customs—such as give-
aways and feasts (sharing with members of the
community)—take anti-capitalist positions. After
possessions accumulate, they are shared with love
and respect. You give away things that you really
cherish; things of value. You give away something
you feel is part of yourself so you are giving a part
of yourself.
Our spiritual way of life cannot exist within
the capitalist system, which is built upon material-
ism and injustice. Under capitalism the land is not
shared by the community, but owned by a few
people who will sell our fathers’ and mothers’
bones to accumulate even more wealth. The leaders
are not the servants of the people, but the servants
of those who own big businesses.
Capitalism always has been and always will be
an enemy of Native people. I feel that some of the
people in the ruling class understand this, and that
this is one of the true reasons they attack us. It is in
their interests to keep Native people oppressed.
What is going to make the red man survive
with pride and dignity is the spiritualism that has
always been a part of him. Now, in 1978, many
Native people are starting once again to learn from
their elders and to respect them. We must always
be grateful to our elders because they have pre-
served our language and the ways of our ancestors;
they have saved our spiritual way of life from the
onslaught of capitalism and colonial exploitation.
Even if the white man were to kill all of our elders
tomorrow he would find that genocide would not
work, for we have children among us who will be-
come elders tomorrow; we even have elders among
the unborn.
Dancing, The Native People's Caravan
Our elders are our history books, but they will
only give us a small amount of knowledge at a
time. We can't expect to learn everything at once;
we must hear the teachings four or five times be-
fore we achieve true understanding. We have been
conditioned to abuse our elders or ignore them;
other people think they can go to the elders and
“pump everything out of them." But we must
realize that we can't just put it all on tape; the lear-
ning process goes on and on. We must learn how to
look after our elders and medicine people, and see
to their needs when they get older, because our
communication with the Creator comes through
them.
The elders are our history books and the
sweat lodges are our universities, but there is no
graduation. There is nothing we can't learn, but we
must always continue to strive for understanding
through prayer, meditation and hard work. 1 bc-
lieve that my whole life is a process of going from
one journey to another, and that I will go to the
Spirit World with the level of consciousness I have
at the time of my death. When we leave our bodies
we are onto another journey that never ends, and
spiritualism can move us onto a higher level of con-
sciousness.
In learning the sacred ways of our people it is
important for us to relearn our mother’s language,
for our language is the key to our culture and the
opening to understanding our traditional way of
life. We must have the language which the Creator
has given us before we can understand the deeper
meaning of the elders’ teachings.
We must also listen to and learn from our
children. We understand that the Creator has given
them to us as a gift, and that it is an honour for us
to look after them for the short time we will have
them with us. Our children are given to us in a pure
FOLLOWING THE RED PATH 91
state, and until they become changed by the society
in which we live, we can learn things about our en-
vironment and about ourselves by listening to
them.
Another key to our movement will be under-
standing the role of our Native women. Because we
have been living in a corrupt and sick society, many
of our values have been undermined so that we
have become like our enemy, sexist and racist, and
that has been used against our own people to divide
us. Women are very sacred beings because they
have a direct connection with the fire of life; our
children are loaned to us by the Creator through
them. They are the ones who will decide whether
we survive as a race of people, and our enemies are
aware of this. They have deliberately tried to have
our women sterilized in the Northern areas
wherever possible.
A woman is a complete being, while a man
must seek the other half of himself through the
fast. We think of the drum as a woman and it is
important for the drummers to respect it. This is
why women are never drummers. On Parliament
Hill when the RCMP attacked our people, the
women picked up the drum and kept it going, but
only until the men could reach it, so that the heart
beat of our people would not be broken.
I strongly believe in prayer to the Creator,
whom I call the Great Spirit. Yet I believe prayer
alone is not enough. Hard work must go along with
it to serve the needs of the people— not the indi-
vidual, but the community. The Native spiritualist
movement which is developing across this country
will benefit both Natives and non-natives, because
we are learning from our ancestors to live co-
operatively, as they did.
We must learn from our elders and listen to
our children, but I do not believe that we must wait
for our children to make things better. Our elders,
our children and ourselves can make things better
now. We need not wait for tomorrow; we continue
the struggle today.
Spiritualism, to me, is very down to earth—
Mother Earth. І feel that it is really very practical,
and that it always serves the interests of the people.
I have seen Native spiritualism go through changes
even in my lifetime. At one time our elders and
spiritual leaders were underground, and Native
92 FOLLOWING THE RED PATH
people weren't supposed to talk about spiritualism.
Today, we talk about it quite openly. It is very im-
portant that many of our elders and medicine
people are now emerging to lead us in the move-
ment for self-determination for Native people.
Many non-natives have the false idea that
when the red man is free, they will be in bondage.
Their own leaders have given them this impression
in order to control them. But the white man is also
à part of the circle of life, and to wipe out one part
of the circle would be to play the role of the
Creator. This is why Native people have always
shared with the white man.
Now, Natives and non-natives must learn to
live co-operatively because the time of purification
is at hand; some say it has already taken place.
Mother Earth will be rebelling against the destruc-
tion that man has inflicted upon here, and will be
cleansing herself. Our prophecies tell us that all this
will take place. It has also been said that the white
man will come to us at that time and ask for our
help. It is important that whoever survives the
purification will be able to live and share together;
thus, the ones who consciously prepare now will
survive. Only when the Red Nation emerges and we
are living in co-existence with our non-native
brothers and sisters will we be free.
As we struggle for self-determination and for
spiritual understanding, it will become clear to us
what it means to have an independent Red Nation
in North America. Before the Europeans came to
this country we had our own education, our own
councils and our own medicine people. We were an
independent nation, held together by spiritual be-
liefs and unwritten laws which we all understood.
In the fight for self-determination, we must strive
for the pride and dignity of our ancestors, and for
their spiritual understanding of our relationship to
the land. We must recapture our sense of whole-
ness, and our awareness of ourselves as spiritual
beings.
In a true sense, our politics is our spiritualism,
and our political organization is the circle of life to
which we belong. Self-determination might mean
that we will develop a state within a state. It will
definitely mean a return to our traditional ways.
But because Native spiritualism is a way of life it is
our actions that will be important; ideas and
theories aren't enough. And always, as we travel
towards independence, we must seek the advice of
our elders so that we will have a better under-
standing of events and will know how to respond to
them.
Because of economic conditions, things are
going to get worse before they get better. I believe
that we are heading towards a dictatorship and by
the time the average citizen wakes up it will be too
late. But as far as Native people are concerned, as
long as we believe in ourselves and our Creator and
work hard at making our communities better
places for ourselves and our children, we will over-
come and survive. We have borne the brunt of
colonial exploitation for over four hundred years,
and after capitalism is defeated and gone we will
still be here as proud red men and red women.
I first began to understand the true meaning of
Native spiritualism on the Caravan, but it was a
positive force in my life for many years before that.
I think spiritualism has kept me going all these
years. It helped me survive prisons, mental institu-
tions, skid row, alcoholism, drug addiction, and
the self-guilt that was conditioned and forced upon
me. Now I am at the level of consciousness where I
am learning the religious aspects of Native
spiritualism, through pipe ceremonies, spiritual
sweats, sun dances, peyote ceremonies, flesh offer-
ings and other rituals. | am lcarning to speak my
mother's tongue, as I once did when I was a small
child. I am in the process of learning to be a red
man again, and as that happens I will become a
free man.
FOLLOWING THE RED PATH 93
Vern Harper, 1978
“The RCMP had the guns, the bayonets and the tear gas; we had a drum and a sheet
of paper with our demands. "—Louis Cameron
On September 30th, 1974, the Native People's Caravan arrived in Ottawa for the
thirtieth official opening of the Canadian Parliament. The Caravan had set out from
Vancouver only two weeks before, with little advance planning and no official fund-
ing. It had come to talk about housing, education and health care, but when the
people of the Caravan arrived on Parliament Hill the Prime Minister refused to meet
them. Instead, they were charged by helmeted, club-swinging, riot-trained police.
This book is a first-person account of the Native People's Caravan by one of its
members and co-founders. Vern Harper tells the story of the Caravan in the narra-
tive style of the Native oral tradition, recounti ts origins, the obstacles it over-
came as it travelled across the country, and the learning experience it provided for
the people on it. y
The Native People's Caravan marked the climax of a dramatic period of Native
militancy, closely following the occupation of Anicinabe Park and the road
blockade at Cache Creek. In Following the Red Path Vern Harper discusses both the
history of the Native movement and its future. He states that the movement has been
on an upswing since 1974—though it hasn't always been in the headlines. Native
people have been working in their communities and building their organizations,
developing their political skills for future struggle. B
And, the author emphasizes, **many of us are going back to the sacred ways
our people.” In the conclusion to this book, Vern Harper discusses the conne. tions
between the political and spiritual aspects of the movement, and his belief that the
road to Native Nationhood lies in following the red path of Native ы сс ыы
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